Computing at West Wycombe School

Intent

At West Wycombe School, we encourage the use of technology as a means of supplementing and enhancing the learning and teaching experience. The children are presented with a wide range of opportunities and experiences to ensure they can successfully utilise their technological skills and knowledge in a variety of contexts. At West Wycombe School, the safety of the children is our priority. Online safety forms an ever increasing part of this.

We use Kapow to support our planning and teaching of Computing. Kapow Primary’s Computing scheme aims to instil a sense of enjoyment around using technology and to develop pupil’s appreciation of its capabilities and the opportunities technology offers to, create, manage, organise, and collaborate.

Tinkering’ with software and programs forms a part of the ethos of the scheme as we want to develop pupils’ confidence when encountering new technology, which is a vital skill in the ever evolving and changing landscape of technology. Through our curriculum, we intend for pupils not only to be digitally competent and have a range of transferable skills at a suitable level for the future workplace, but also to be responsible online citizens.

Implementation

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies, including independent tasks, paired and group work, as well as unplugged and digital activities. Our units provide students with the opportunity to learn transferable skills. Where meaningful, units are linked to other subjects across the curriculum, to ensure children understand how computing can be applied. 

The computing curriculum enables students to develop curiosity and problem-solving skills, a capacity to work with others and take initiative for themselves. It focuses on five key areas, on a cyclical basis, which enables students to revisit and build on prior learning. The five areas are: 

• Computer systems and networks
• Programming
• Creating media
• Data handling
• Online Safety

We take online safety extremely seriously at West Wycombe and it is not only taught in specific lessons, but woven across our curriculum to ensure the safety of our pupils. Our Computing curriculum addresses the challenges and opportunities offered by the technologically rich world in which we live. We use computing to enrich our curriculum across the key stages and ensure coverage of the national curriculum expectations. Following a clear progression of skills throughout the school, there are opportunities for children to be creative at the same time having the opportunity to create podcasts and digital music.

Impact

The impact of this curriculum ensures that when children leave our school, they are competent and safe users of Computing with an understanding of how technology works. They will have developed skills to express themselves and be creative in using digital media and be equipped to apply their skills in Computing to different challenges going forward.

Our approach to the curriculum results in a fun, engaging, and high-quality computing education. Formative assessment is used to feed into teachers’ future planning; teachers are able to revisit misconceptions and knowledge gaps in computing when teaching other curriculum areas. This supports varied paces of learning and ensures all pupils make good progress.

Our children are passionate coders, and thrive on using coding software to program for different purposes. Much of the subject-specific knowledge developed in our computing lessons equip pupils with experiences which will benefit them in secondary school, further education and future workplaces. From research methods, use of presentation and creative tools and critical thinking, computing at West Wycombe School gives children the building blocks that enable them to pursue a wide range of interests and vocations in the next stage of their lives.

Our children leave West Wycombe School knowledgeable about the technology around them. They leave ready to develop technology to enhance and improve the world around us.