Computing

Intent

Computing is an essential skill for children to learn and an important part of the curriculum at Damers First School. It is our intent at Damers to provide all of our children with a high-quality education in computing which provides access to an ever changing and expanding digital world. Throughout their time at this school, our children will begin to develop the key skills and understanding of computing that they need to navigate an increasingly digital world in a safe and successful way.

Implementation

At Damers, we currently  teach discrete Computing lessons following the ‘Rising Stars – Switched On Computing’ scheme but we also use technology where appropriate to enhance other areas of the curriculum. In an increasingly digital world we have to ensure that our children are skilled in using technology in all areas of work, including, but not limited to using computers, software and other technology in maths, literacy, geography and a host of other cross-curricular subject areas. While we currently use the ‘Rising Stars – Switched on Computing Scheme’  we are currently reviewing and evaluating the use of this scheme to ensure it meets the current and future needs of our children.

To support our teaching of computing we use Google Workspace and are proud to be a Google Reference School, owing to our effective and innovative use of technology. We provide our children with excellent resources to support the implementation of our computing curriculum which includes: 

  • An individual Chromebook for all children in Years 3 and 4; 
  • A paired Chromebook for all children in Year 2; 
  • Access to a small set of class Chromebooks in Year 1 and Foundation; 
  • Access to a group set of iPads from Foundation to Year 2; and 
  • Access to a range of other computing resources, from programmable robots and toys to cameras and green screen backgrounds for filming.

The Computing Curriculum at Damers incorporates many different topics and themes and children from Foundation up to Year 4 can expect to program robots, create their own Scratch coding projects, collaborate on documents, create digital books, research on the internet, communicate, under supervision, with others online (within a safe environment), and much, much  more.

There is also a weekly ‘Computing Club’ where children from Key Stage 2 who have shown a special interest in computing get the chance to work on developing their own computer programming skills.

At the forefront of our computing curriculum is a focus on staying safe. While online safety is implicit within all Computing lessons we also ensure that the children at Damers understand how to safely communicate online in any context, the importance of understanding their digital footprint and what to do if they are ever concerned about anything that has happened while online or using technology. We do this through a half-termly focus on a specific area of online safety, a yearly whole school online safety day and lots of proactive work working with our children and wider school community in order to improve their knowledge and understanding of staying safe online.

Impact

Children will have developed the knowledge, skills and understanding to help them access and use a range of technology in a safe, creative and successful way in line with their age-related  expectations. Children’s skills will have progressed to enable them to not only have met the requirements of the National Curriculum but to also enjoy using technology to develop knowledge and ideas as well as express themselves safely and creatively as responsible members of the online community.  As a school, we will continually seek out ways to improve our teaching of computing by taking part in and using research,  reflecting critically on our computing provision and through a strong focus on data and assessment.

Please click to view our Computing Progession of Knowledge and Skills.