Intent

At St Johns, our vision is for the children to have a world-leading computing education. This is why we work with STEM Learning and The National Computing Centre for Education (NCCE) and their comprehensive range of evidence-informed, high-quality support. We use their Teach Computing syllabus and effectively match the programmes to themes and subjects within our curriculum e.g. within mathematics, science and design and technology.

We believe that our high-quality computing programme equips pupils to develop computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. It also ensures that pupils become digitally literate and show increasing ability to express themselves and develop ideas through information and communication technology. As active participants in a digital world, St John's values are reflected within our teaching, growing learners to model respect and consideration at the very heart of all of their interactions online.

Implementation

The teaching of Computing across St John’s follows the National Curriculum through:

• breadth of learning from EYFS to KS2, where knowledge and skills are developed progressively and abstract ideas/vocabulary (e.g. ‘digital footprint’, ‘sprite’) are revisited and built upon with each year group.
• cross curricular links where children are encouraged to apply other learning e.g linking spreadsheets with data objectives in maths, using code to make games which link to History and Geography topics to help immerse the children in their learning. Our topics are cross curricular to ensure excellent links for children.
• referencing school values within each digital literacy topic. This links learning in Computing to the wider school focus on British values, communicated namely through collective worships.
• collaborative learning, where children work together towards goals, exploring different roles within a team explicit teaching of vocabulary for each topic.
• a focus on retrieval and revisiting knowledge to allow it to be embedded in the long term memory.

Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice) and asking key assessment questions to a range of children.
• measuring assessment standards using targeted questions, observations, and looking at children’s work (saved on Teams/BGfL etc).
• Using the ‘Evolve’ assessment tool to ensure our online safety curriculum is being well received and understood.
• monitoring teacher planning.
• celebrating images and videos of the children’s practical learning.

Online Safety

At St John's, keeping children safe online and equipping children to keep themselves safe online is a high priority. Skilled members of staff use the  Project EVOLVE assessment aids and toolkits to deliver an important programme of work to reflect the philosophy behind the project. This is to “evolve” the online safety messages that children and young people has in the past been taught into something more appropriate; more meaningful; that encouraged reflection; that generated positive outcomes. Children are encouraged to reflect and discuss, prompted by appropriate questions accompanied by honest and useful information to shape thinking and challenge misconceptions. 

If you would like to see links and information we provide regarding Online Safety for parents & carers and children at home, including resources specifically for children with SEND, please visit the 'online safety links and useful information'  section of the website.

Knowledge Map Assessments

At the beginning of each strand, teachers complete a Knowledge Map with the children. This is a guided assessment and allows the children to vote for multiple choice answers. From this data, teachers then know where the starting point in for developing learning within the strand. Children revisit the assessment again at the end of the unit.