At Northern House Academy, our Computing curriculum is built around and underpinned by our School values. As such our approach is designed around understanding the needs of each individual child, is unapologetic in its high expectation, knowing that our children are not defined by their needs but instead viewed with the positivity they need in order to be nurtured both emotionally and academically, it is consistent in order to enable a safe environment where our pupils are empowered to take risks and experience success and it must be a Computing curriculum that promotes the simple pleasure of happiness.
At Northern House Academy we understand that a high-quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. We only have to look at our pupil voice section in our EHCP documentation to see the impact that computing has on the modern world with many of our pupils’ aspirations shifting from wanting to be ‘footballers’ or ‘astronauts’ to wanting to be ‘Content Creators’, ‘Gamers’ or ‘Coders’. As such it is vital that our computing curriculum not only meets the breadth and depth of the National Curriculum but serves to meet this developing and emerging need, as our pupils and the world continue to shift into an ever evolving technological age.
Our computing curriculum provides insights into both natural and artificial systems and is linked to many of our thematic learning topics, including deep links to mathematics, science, and design and technology. The core of computing is computer science, in which pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work, and how to put this knowledge to use through programming. Building on this knowledge and understanding, pupils are equipped to use information technology to create programs, systems and a range of content. Our computing curriculum also ensures that pupils become digitally literate, and are able to develop their ideas and express themselves through information and communication technology. At Northern House Academy we want to build upon the recreational love many of our pupils have for the real life applications of computing in order to support their understanding of the mechanics of technology. We do this by delivering a high-quality computing curriculum which includes a weekly lesson designed around the National Curriculum areas of study. Coverage includes understanding and applying the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, building skills of logic, abstraction, algorithms and data representation. In addition to this we also teach students how to analyse problems in computational terms. For instance, how to evaluate unfamiliar technologies analytically to solve problems and to be responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.
We also understand how vulnerable our children may be and take seriously our responsibility to support our learners by teaching them how to navigate safely and successfully in an increasingly online world. We therefore ensure that internet and E-Safety are a continuous part of our computing curriculum and have a dedicated focus on this for a termly unit but also ensure that the active ingredients of good internet safety are addressed throughout our curriculum. This aspect of our computing curriculum has strong links with our ‘How to stay safe’ PSHE units of work. We carefully considered the development and acquisition of skills in the design of our computing curriculum, so that pupils learn and develop their skills and knowledge by revisiting the same topic several times throughout their school career. Each time a student returns to a particular topic, they do so with a deeper level of understanding and explore it with increasing complexity. This approach enables our students to draw on and utilise their prior knowledge before then building upon it, with every cycle.