Computing
Computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world.
At Kingston Park Primary we believe that computing is an intrinsic skill for thriving in modern day Britain. Being a confident computational thinker prepares our pupils to fully participate in a rapidly changing society and economy, whereby an ever growing number of activities are dependent upon, and are transformed, by developing technology. We believe that increasing access to, and capability in Computing, promotes initiative and independent learning. This in turn allows pupils to consider the implications of Computing in school, at home and beyond.
Currently, as part of our #YearofTech, we are continuing to heavily invest in upgrading all of the technology we have in school to ensure that our pupils have access to the most current computing equipment. This has included the purchase of progressive coding tools – Docs; Cojis; Ozobots; Crumbles and Raspberry Pi kits; upgrading our iPads to the newest 6th generation versions with access to the latest apps; and we are currently procuring state-of-the-art, interactive ‘Big Pad’ TVs for use in every classroom. Our goal is to ensure that all of this technology is continuously accessible to enhance the learning in all lessons. We also continue to invest in the continuous professional development of all of our staff, providing them with the knowledge and expertise to facilitate current coding and programming skills.
Pupils at Kingston Park will be given the opportunity to:-
o Find things out and find information.
o Make things happen by controlling and monitoring events.
o Try things out by modelling real and imaginary situations.
o Acquire and refine techniques e.g. saving, copying, checking information and so on.
o Develop skills of collecting data, analysing, processing information and prediction.
o To listen to others, listening to ideas and expertise. Co-operating and collaborating with others when using the computers.
o To explore values and attitudes through Computing.
o To consider the needs and response of the ‘audience’ for their work.
o To explore and appreciate the possibilities and limitations of Computing.
o To decide when the use of Computing is most appropriate, given the audience and purpose of the task they are undertaking.
STEAM learning is an important part of our curriculum and wherever possible, cross-curricular links are made to demonstrate how computing can be used (along with maths, science and art) to promote design and innovation across a number of subjects.
As well as an emphasis on the teaching of digital literacy and computer science, we also dedicate a whole topic at the start of every new academic year to ‘Digital e-safety’. We are committed to ensuring that every child knows how to keep themselves and others safe whilst online.
After much rigorous research, we follow the CEOP scheme of work when teaching e-safety; code.org, GEM, Make Stuff North East and Computing for Kids NE schemes of work for coding and programming, as well as a cross-curricular approach to teaching digital literacy, all of which meet the 2014 National Curriculum KS1 and KS2 objectives.
