Carlton Colville Primary School

At Carlton Colville we offer a broad curriculum that enables the progression of computing substantive and disciplinary knowledge required to meet the aims of the National Curriculum. The content allows for a broad and deep understanding of computing and how it links to children's lives. It offers a range of opportunities for consolidation, challenge and variety. This allows children to apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science. The children develop analytical problem-solving skills and learn to evaluate and apply information technology. It also enables them to become safe, responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information technology. 
 

The computing curriculum is led and overseen by the Computing and Outdoor Learning Team, whose intention for the school is to inspire pupils to develop a love of the digital world and to see its place in their future. The team encourages and supports all staff to teach computing in, at times, a bespoke and cross-curricular way so that the children's knowledge schema is enhanced through interesting and memorable ways, (e.g. Webpages explaining the life of Henry VIII, a Stop-Go animation of Grace Darling's night of heroism, or an animated PowerPoint explaining the lifecycle of a plant.)

A regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and staff support takes place along with the celebration and sharing of good practice. There is an ongoing commitment to evolve and improve the quality and impact of computing on offer to all the children.  The computing curriculum is discussed and evaluated with teachers at the end of each year and enhancements are made as required. The subject leaders keep up to date with new teaching initiatives and plan them into the curriculum. For example, we work closely with BT (Ipswich) and take part in any initiatives they introduce in coding. In previous years the year 6 children have been involved with the COSPACE coding project too. We also have a regular link with the media department at East Coast College and Lowestoft Sixth Form College.

We continue to build teacher confidence through training courses and targeted CPD sessions. Guidance documents have been produced to support teaching staff and give them added confidence with their teaching. These documents include an overview of the curriculum, progression of knowledge/skills, pedagogical approaches and assessment guides. The team has also produced a computing glossary (for coding) that is displayed in each classroom. Details of key concepts to be learnt have been included in the progression documents for each year group too.

The school has two computing suites that all year groups have access too. KS2 have a bank of laptops and Chromebooks available for whole class use and KS1 have access to a class set of iPads.

In addition to learning computing skills across the curriculum, pupils have opportunities to improve their knowledge, skills and understanding through after-school clubs. Some year groups take part in computing activities as part of their enrichment afternoons too. There are also occasions to attend special events in the community and within school. For example, East Norfolk Sixth Form College runs some WEDO coding sessions with Year 3 and Year 4 children.

Key Stage 2 children are given the opportunity to apply to become an Online Safety Leader.  These children meet regularly with the IT Manager to plan how to give online safety messages to the rest of the pupils in school.

Assessment
Our bespoke assessment systems enables teachers to make informed judgements about the depth learning and the progress each pupil has made over time. Critically this then enables teachers to identify and therefore address any gaps in pupil’s computing knowledge.
Through skilled questioning, teachers pick up on any misconceptions which they rectify through live feedback during the lessons and through marking of pupils' work.

Our computing curriculum, enrichment and extra-curricular activities give our children the best opportunities to develop their computing skills and to educate them about the importance of computing across all areas of life, both now, and in the future. Children in our school enjoy computing. Teachers have high expectations and quality evidence of the children’s work is presented in a variety of forms. Children are developing their use of technical vocabulary, alongside a good progression in their technical skills. As they progress through the school, children become more confident using a range of hardware and software and produce high-quality purposeful products.

Most children see the digital world as part of their world, extending beyond school, and understand that they have choices to make. Children are becoming confident and respectful digital citizens

There are elements of awe and wonder throughout the curriculum and experiences that the children remember years later. For example, year 6 children commenting on Stop-go animations they made in year 3. Year 5 children commenting on how they have developed their coding skills since lower down in the key stage. 

Isla - “Our camera wouldn’t connect to the first computer but we changed computers and then it was okay. It was fun working in a group with my friends.”

India - “Our computer kept having problems but we persevered and I enjoyed doing it.”

Vinnie - “We have been using Kodu to learn how to program and make a cool game. We got better the more we used it and I really enjoyed it. I thought that if my game was good enough I might be able to sell it.”

Evie - “We learned how to change the colours and make the Kodus and Rovers move. It was quite hard at first but got easier.”

Year 4 have been busy developing their Scratch coding skills by creating competitive multiplication practise games. The code created, tests the players on random questions from the 1 to 12 times tables, which is good practise for us all! The children used their own unique ideas to create games with sound effects and user messages to motivate the players.

After they created their initial games, the children reviewed their code line by line to try to spot errors or omissions. After this, they went back to their code to improve the games. There were some great “Wow!” moments when we changed our code to make it work properly.

We were very impressed with the children progress in the children’s coding skills and the very unique designs and coding ideas!!

Year 5 have been website creators and authors using Google Sites. The focus of the website was to inform others about historical astronomers which we researched before half term. The children were able to create a basic structure of a website then build from there adding additional pages, images and embed videos.