Elm Hall Primary School

‘The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before’ Steve Bullmer

My name is Hannah Shoard and I am the Computing lead at Elm Hall Primary School.

At our school, we recognise that technology plays a huge part in modern life and will only continue to become more integral as our children grow up. Our curriculum endeavours to create a love of learning with technology but also, highlights those skills amongst our pupils and create future programmers, IT specialists, debugging experts and inventors in computer science as well as providing children with the skills needed for the use of computing within the wider world . It is not only essential that our curriculum allows children to have a solid understanding of the basic skills for using a computer but for them also to explore and experience the use of a range of technology confidently. One of the key aspects of our computing curriculum is for children to develop the understanding that technology is a tool for learning, innovation and discovery and we do this through a variety of hands-on experiences of hardware and software.

Our curriculum aims to embed computing skills through discreet computing lessons which are planned, linked and rooted into other areas of our learning. Computing is taught at Elm Hall via units that focus on topic areas. The 4 units of teaching include: Computer systems and Networks, Data and Information, Programming and Creating media. Feeding through all the topic areas are technical skills. These are problem solving, programming, logical thinking, searching, creating content and digital literacy skills that build upon previous learning.

As a school, we implement our lessons through a variety of programmes, online tools and practical equipment such as google classroom, coding programmes such as scratch and blogging and microbits. Our curriculum allows the children to explore making simple products such as cards, posters and data collection as well as delving deeper into more complex areas such as creating games, animations, debugging programmes and creating web pages.

The Elm Hall curriculum for computing aims to ensure that all pupils:

• can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
• can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
• can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
• are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.

As a school, we have 2 large computer suites, allowing class sessions to be taught with one computer per child. We also use a variety of other equipment including ipads, programmable toys, microbits and electronic recording systems. These resources are not used exclusively for computing sessions but are intertwined throughout our learning areas to allow purpose and cross-curricular learning. E-Safety is a highly valued part of our curriculum which is taught within our lessons through project evolve, ensuring we provide our children with progressive knowledge and tools throughout their primary school journey. It is paramount that through learning how to use technology in different ways, the children are also taught how to do so safely and sensibly.

Our curriculum is creating inquisitive learners who enjoy challenge and exploration of today’s technology. We encourage a learning style through our lessons which allows the children to become experts in a variety of different areas. Through computer science, digital literacy and information technology, there is an area for all learners to excel and be challenged.

Below are some examples of the amazing work that our children have created showing their ability to apply the skills of our curriculum across a wide range of digital literacy, information technology and computer science.