Computing

Computing at the Skylark Federation

Intent

At the Skylark Federation, we aim to prepare our learners for their future by giving them the opportunities to gain knowledge and develop skills that will equip them for an ever-changing digital world. Computing has become of increasing importance due to the recent paradigm shift. The last few years have shown how crucial technology can be in allowing access to work and education therefore making knowledge and understanding of ICT vital for children’s future, both at home and for their further education and employment.

Our focus is to construct a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with special educational needs, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. With an emphasis on online safety, our objective is to ensure that our pupils are equipped with the knowledge and skills to protect themselves and behave responsibly online.

Implementation

It is essential that teachers are confident and competent using a program which ensures quality first teaching throughout the school. To achieve this, we use Purple Mash to ensure depth and coverage of curriculum. Through quality first teaching and use of a variety of software, we enable children to use computers, tablets, digital and video cameras. Therefore, the children can acquire, organise, store, manipulate, interpret, communicate and present information in different ways.

At the Skylark Federation we use a 2-year rolling programme to ensure coverage for our split year group classes.

Impact

We evaluate the impact of our curriculum by assessing the children in two key areas: Online safety and Coding. We believe these are the most essential skills four our children to secure so that, when they leave the Skylark Federation, they are ‘ICT literate’.

It is the responsibility of the Computing Leads, to identify areas for development and create plans and targets to constantly improve the provision of computing within the federation.