Intent:

What is our rationale for the content choices?

The South Hams Federation is using our newly developed curriculum documents in order to teach a mastery curriculum in Computing.  Teaching for mastery is crucial in embedding skills and knowledge in students. The National Curriculum in computing underlines the importance and value of teaching approaches that give students the best chance of securing both deep understanding of computational concepts and fluency in applying them in a range of contexts.

There is a termly plan for each year group from Year 1 to Year 6; each term is split into two six week units. You will see from the overviews that the different curriculum objectives and recapped throughout each year group and Key Stage to ensure consolidation. Teacher’s provide a range of resources from a range of quality sources to help support and extend children in each cohort.

In the South Hams Federation we work towards promoting a lifelong love for learning where all children can learn alongside each other.

Implementation

Curriculum map- In Curriculum file showing the different units from FS- Y6

How are you teaching Computing?

• Teaching is underpinned by methodical curriculum design and supported by carefully crafted lessons and resources to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge.
• Medium Term planning written to cover all curriculum objectives for FS, KS1 and KS2.
• Mastery is at the heart of the planning and teaching process, enabling all children to be able to access the curriculum content while moving along at the same pace.
• Computing is taught weekly while general skills are also taught within other lessons across the curriculum.
• Children identify their targets at the beginning of a unit and reflect on these at the end. Each child completes an elicitation and end of unit task.
• Computing vocabulary is explicitly written within the each year group’s weekly planning – this is discussed with children who are encouraged to use it independently. Children are given opportunity to apply their understanding and solve problems regularly; learning is varied and allows for deep and secure understanding. Knowledge organisers are being implemented to support children to work independently during sessions.
• Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess children regularly to identify those requiring intervention, so that all children keep up.
• Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content.
• Half termly the unit is assessed and recorded in the computing books. This is used as a further piece of evidence to mark against the KS objectives.
• The planning contains the objective, vocabulary, resources needed and key questions.
• Children ‘have a go’ and choose the equipment they need to help them to learn along with the strategies they think are best suited to each problem. Children are developing skills in being articulate and are able to verbally, pictorially and in written form reason well.
• Children work both collaboratively and independently solving problems, which require them to persevere and develop resilience.
• Mini plenaries throughout the lesson to check for misconceptions and understanding
• Peer talk – mixed ability pairing
• Resources – Ensuring that the concrete is taught alongside the pictorial and abstract.

How do you build on the skills from each year group?

• Use a whole school planning system.
• Teachers are given the progression of skills within each planning unit
• Each year group builds upon the skills previously learnt and return as required to further deepen understanding and ensure secure knowledge.
• See the progression of skills in each year group
• Targets and focuses are skills based for each year group
• Teachers complete AFL on planning

Staff Training

• Insets delivered by Subject Leaders
• Use of CPD videos supplied within scheme.
• Additional resources etc. to be shared by subject lead as appropriate.

Impact

• Every child will achieve and a greater percentage of pupils will demonstrate learning at greater depth in computing, regardless of their starting points. This will be achieved through the provision of learning that provides opportunities for pupils to deepen their subject knowledge and understanding, and allows them to apply reasoning and problem solving skills in a wide range of differing contexts. This is evident in every child’s book.
• Teachers will provide opportunities for pupils to apply learn independently encouraging independent resourceful learners across the curriculum.
• Teachers will deepen their subject knowledge in computing, and challenge pupils learning and through teachers rapidly addressing pupil’s misconceptions via skilful, timely “effective questioning”.
• Every child will use feedback well to improve their work in every subject and will easily identify their individual targets and the purpose of what they are learning. Children have a Growth Mindset and they make measurable progression against their own targets.
• Every child will not only feel challenged but will feel supported by every adult, their peers and the classroom environment, as well as boosted at home.
• Children make good or better progress from their starting points
• Through using a whole school planning approach, children are able to build upon their understanding without repeating unnecessarily.
• High quality teaching and learning prevents a disparity between groups of children, equity for all.
• Our school standards are high, we moderate our books both within schools and across the federation and children are achieving well.

Moderation takes place in own school/ within Federation

Focus for action/key priorities:

To continue to embed a consistent approach to the teaching of mastery and fluency in computing with a focus on cultural capital and ensuring that the units taught provide opportunity for a range of contexts etc.