INTENT

At St Mark's C.E Primary School we strongly believe that the use of ICT and the development of computing skills are crucial for our pupils’ education and as a part of their everyday life skills. In order to equip our children for the modern world, we will use technology to develop their critical thinking, collaborative skills, communication and creativity not just in our computing lessons, but throughout the curriculum. We want our pupils to understand that there is always a choice with using technology and as a school we utilise technology to model positive use. We recognise that the best prevention for a lot of issues we currently see with technology/social media is through education.  

Our knowledge rich curriculum has to be balanced with the opportunity for pupils to apply their knowledge creatively which will in turn help our pupils become skilful computer scientists.  

We encourage staff to try and embed computing across the whole curriculum to make learning creative and accessible. To ensure that our pupils receive the highest level of Computing and ICT education, we are teaching the latest National Curriculum guidelines.  

Along the National Curriculum guidelines, St Mark's C.E Primary School follows NCCE scheme from year 1 to year 6 and resources provided by LGfL/TRUSTNet.

Our Reception class follow the guidelines set out in the Technology section of the Understanding the World criteria in the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. The criteria underpins our curriculum planning and we continually provide technology based activities for the children in order to enhance their confidence using technologies.

IMPLEMENTATION

The subject of Computing is taught by class teachers in FS, year 1 and year 2 classes both as an elite subject and embedded in cross-curricular activities.  

KS2 Computing is taught by class teachers with a termly support from the Computing coordinator for our trust. The Computing coordinator liaises with class teachers to decide how can Computing be taught across the curriculum. Where possible, Computing is often linked to the main topics being covered in subjects like History and Geography. 

The subject of Computing is assessed by our Computing assessment. Throughout the Computing lessons, teacher records children’s prior knowledge using the specially designed spread sheets. 

We will endeavour to provide numerous opportunities to use available technology both at school and at home to all year groups. This will be done by accessing cloud solutions included in our annual subscription Just2Easy and Busy Things. 

The school’s subscription to G-Suite Apps (Google Workspace) enhances the use of technology across the curriculum and enables extending pupil’s learning at home. What’s more, the use of Google Workspace improves collaboration on a variety of topics across the school and the MAT. All KS2 pupils have their own Google Workspace accounts which are monitored by class teachers as well as the Computing coordinator.

IMPACT

The Computing coordinator as well as the senior leadership team have got access to the computing assessments and evidence provided by pupils and teachers. As most of pupils’ work is stored online (e.g. Just2Easy, BUSY THINGS, Google Workspace), the progress achieved across the year groups can be easily monitored and analysed.

We believe that by the end of the Computing Journey at the end of year 6, our pupils will have had abundance of computing experience by using the range of technology effectively and safely. We also hope that our pupils will have developed resilience and ability to deal with all the daily challenges that technology can throw at us either in their future studies or when applying their computing skills in their future jobs. 

Computing Vocabulary Progression 

 Acceptable Use Policies for KS1 & KS2