Subject Leader - Mrs Rebecca Stevens

Intent

At River Primary School we want our children to be masters of technology and not slaves to it. Technology is everywhere and will play a pivotal part in their lives, Therefore, we want to model and educate our children on how to use technology positively, responsibly and safely. We want our children to be creators not consumers and our broad curriculum encompassing computer science, information technology and digital literacy reflects this. We want our children to understand that there is always a choice with using technology and as a school we utilise technology to model positive use. We recognise that the best prevention for a lot of issues we currently see with technology/social media is through education. Building our knowledge in this subject will allow children to effectively demonstrate their learning through creative use of technology. We recognise that technology can allow children to share their learning in creative ways. We also understand the accessibility opportunities technology can provide for our children. Our knowledge rich curriculum has to be balanced with the opportunity for children to apply their knowledge creatively which will in turn help our children become skilful computer scientists. We encourage staff to try and embed computing across the whole curriculum to make learning creative and accessible. We want our children to be fluent with a range of tools to best express their understanding and hope by Upper Key Stage 2, children have the independence and confidence to choose the best tool to fulfil the task and challenge set by teachers.

Teaching using D.A.R.E.S - a project-based approach to teaching computing.

Click here to find out more about this approach

D - Design: Pupils start to discuss the desired outcome for their project and are given time to tinker with the software before planning what they will do to achieve their outcome.

A - Apply: Pupils are given the opportunity to create, make and produce content using the app or software explored in the Design lesson.

R - Refine: Pupils spend time considering ways to modify and improve their projects to get the best results possible.

E - Evaluate: Upon completing their desired outcome, pupils are given the opportunity to reflect and consider how effectively they have achieved their goal.

S - Share: Learners are given the opportunity to publish and exhibit their work to the world embedding skills from the Digital Literacy curriculum.