Curriculum – Computing
St Bede’s computing curriculum is designed to prepare our pupils for life in the twenty-first century by teaching them to use technology safely, responsibly, confidentially, skilfully, and efficiently. We want to ensure that our pupils are equipped with the knowledge of how to keep themselves and other safe whilst accessing the internet and how to identify risks online. We intend to teach our pupils to become digitally literal by developing their computing skills to utilise information technology by confidently inputting, editing, analysing, and presenting data and information. We want to inspire computer scientists of the future by teaching our children to become creative and resilient critical thinkers and problem solvers who can create, edit, and debug algorithms and programmes.
Experiences for pupils are:
- Inclusive
- Exciting
- Challenging
- Engaging
- Real and experiential
- Relevant to their context
- Influenced by pupils
- Progressive
- Values-led
- Safe
The curriculum is designed to include:
- A clearly articulated learning journey with a purposeful outcome
- An engaging stimulant for learning
- Opportunities for pupils to contribute to planning the learning journey
- Real experiences
- Application of basic skills
- Cross-curricular links where they add value
Our computing lessons are taught discretely, and the curriculum is organised into three strands to ensure all areas of computing are focused upon. They are:
- Online Safety & digital literacy: So that children understand how to use the internet safely and responsibly by being aware of possible internet dangers and understand what steps they need to take to keep themselves safe. So that children are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to use technology effectively.
- Information technology: So that children can select, use, and combine different software programmes to accomplish given goals including collecting, analysing, evaluation and presenting data and information across a range of different digital devices.
- Computer Science: So that children can apply their problem-solving skills to computing and become proficient programmers by creating and debugging algorithms.
We operate a two year rolling cycle as a small school and are currently in cycle a.
The following outcomes are used to measure the impact of our curriculum:
- Pupils who can present, edit, and analyse data in a number of different formats
- Pupils who are passionate about computing
- Pupils who can use technology to aid their progression in other subjects
- Pupils who confidently apply their learning independently
- Pupils who have relevant digital skills
- Pupils who have a positive attitude to technology
- Pupils’ standards and achievements in computing
Pupils who understand:
- How to keep themselves and others safe online
- How to create, debug and edit algorithms