Computing

At Winston Way, our aim is to promote a love of Computing and provide a broad and balanced curriculum that enables children to think computationally, use technology creatively, responsibly and safely so that they can become responsible, active digital participants in an increasingly digital world and have the necessary skills for the future.  

At Winston Way, we have a whole school approach to online safety with an E-safety policy in place. Our Computing and PSHE lessons also allow children to understand how they can keep themselves safe online, understand how online relationships are different to offline relationships and understand that their digital footprint can have a lasting impact on their future.  

By the time our pupils leave Winston Way, we want our children to know and remember more about the key knowledge and skills of the three main strands of the Computing curriculum (computer science, information technology and digital literacy) so that they actively participate within British society and the society they live in. They will also be able to understand and apply the fundamental principles of computer science, analyse problems in computational terms, evaluate and apply information technology and use technology responsible, competently, confidently and creatively.  

At Winston Way, we use the Purple Mash overview, which is in line with the National Curriculum, to ensure we respond to our children’s interests and needs to support them in thinking computationally, being digitally literate and being digitally creative.   

At Winston Way, our computing lessons have the following fundamental characteristics:  

• Use of recaps to build on their prior learning  
• Questions to support and challenge all our learners 
• Explicit teacher instruction 
• Use of Kagan strategies to engage all children  
• Exposure of a wide variety of digital tools and skills to children  
• Opportunities to practise using various digital tools and coding opportunities  

Our Computing curriculum is based on the Purple Mash overview, which is fully supported by the Department for Education and is in line with the new curriculum. It provides all the elements that teachers need to teach computing with confidence and to encourage children to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. 

We measure the impact of our curriculum using the following methods: 

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes 
• Teachers’ end-of-year assessments  
• Pupils’ discussions about their learning  
• Book looks