Computing

Subject Leader - Miss Berry

Here at Forefield Junior School, we have had our own bespoke Computing curriculum over the last few years which has taken inspiration from various different sources and developed our children’s computing knowledge and skills steadily. However, with modern technology always advancing, we have made the decision to move towards a scheme for our Computing curriculum. By making this decision, we can guarantee that our curriculum is modern, effective and led by specialists, ultimately ensuring our children are receiving the highest quality Computing education.

Therefore, after extensive research, we have decided to move towards Kapow-Computing. For many years, we have used Kapow for our Music curriculum with great success. They are a widely respected company with schemes written by expert specialists in subject areas, whilst also continuously working to ensure topics are as up to date as possible.

As part of this gradual change in our Computing curriculum, Kapow recommends a specific transition approach. For each year group, there are two catch up units to ensure the children have the skills ready to begin the scheme. Kapow has comprehensively identified skills the children will need in order to begin each year group, and has collated two units per year group to cover these different areas in the form of ‘catch up’ units. Moving forwards, we are planning to complete these units in the Summer term with a full roll out of the scheme planned for the Autumn term. Each year group will complete the following year’s catch up units, ready to begin their coming year group’s scheme in September. For example, our current year 3 pupils will complete the two year 4 catch up units in the Summer term – covering skills from years 1, 2 and 3 – ready to begin their year 4 scheme from September.

Over the next few weeks and months, this area of our website will continue to be updated with resources to provide more information about our exciting new scheme, so please keep an eye out for future updates!

We will still keep our subscription to our Online Safety Newsletter. This is still shared monthly via Seesaw, and provides the most up-to-date information regarding current Online Safety issues affecting our pupils today, and excellent advice for how we can all keep our children safe online.

In Years 5 and 6, as part of our Computer Science topics, 'Everton in the Community' lead lessons utilising robots! Here is the website to have a look at what they will be getting up to: https://www.evertoninthecommunity.org/projects/education/e-steam/

Computing Curriculum

Computer Science- The study of computers as machines and how they operate including programming, algorithms, variables, sequence, selection and repetition.

Digital Literacy- The skills you need to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information is increasingly through digital technologies like internet platforms, social media, and mobile devices. This includes being knowledgeable and responsible users of technology, using the internet and other platforms safely and respectfully.

Information Technology- The ability to create, retrieve, combine and manipulate digital content. The understanding of computer networks, the world-wide web and the internet and how they operate.

	Autumn Term	Spring Term	Summer Term
Year 3	Digital Literacy: My Online Life - E-Safety Information Technology: Online Detectives - Advanced Internet Searching	Information Technology: Be Digitally Awesome - Microsoft Office Skills	Computer Science: Dancing Robot - Scratch Jr Programming with Robots - Creating Algorithms
Year 4	Digital Literacy: My Online Life - E-Safety Information Technology: Endagered Animals - Producing Publications	Computer Science: Hour of Code - Writing Algorithms to Animate Information Technology: Fake or Real? - Advanced Internet Searching	Information Technology: Dinosaurs - Stop-motion Animation Computer Science: Create a game using Scratch
Year 5	Information Technology: Computer Systems and Networks Video Production	Computer Science: Everton in the Community Project Information Technology: Making AR Games	Digital Literacy: My Online Life - E-Safety Computer Science Project
Year 6	Information Technology: Computer Systems and Networks - Communication and Collaboration Web Page Production	Computer Science: Everton in the Community Project Digital Literacy: My Online Life - E-Safety	Information Technology: Data and Information - Introduction to Spreadsheets Computer Science Project

Reading within the Computing Curriculum

In today's information-driven society, the ability to read critically is essential for academic and career success. By teaching reading across the curriculum, we are equipping children in our school with a crucial skill that will facilitate learning across the breadth of the curriculum. Reading is not just about decoding words on a page, but also about comprehending and analysing information. Reading is a fundamental skill in computing lessons, crucial for understanding computational thinking problems, comprehending code, and mastering instructions. It involves reading word problems, analysing and tracing code, and understanding the syntax and rules of programming languages. Teaching reading skills also includes using specific reading resources like storybooks or fact files to make the subject more accessible and engaging for pupils.