| ST. ANSELM’S COLLEGE CURRICULUM VISION FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE |
| VISION – A highly ambitious curriculum in Computer Science equips our pupils with the skills, knowledge and understanding to be ready for the next key stage of their learning journey. We understand that an excellent curriculum design and delivery leads to an excellent education. The Computer Science Curriculum provides a wide range of engaging and exciting learning experiences for our pupils that will build their current skills, challenge our students and nurture their determination to succeed. |
| INTENT – summary of the thinking behind your curriculum design and its sequencing Provide an excellent education for all our students; a computing curriculum which brings out the best in all of them and prepares them for success in life. See Teach Computing Curriculum Journey |
| IMPLEMENTATION – summary of the pedagogy to be used to effectively deliver the curriculum The Department encourages students to ensure they have covered the topic requirements before moving onto the next task. We encourage KS3 students to opt for our subject at GCSE and likewise GCSE students opting for A-Level. We promote, and have established links with, a number of Universities and businesses. In our lessons pupils tackle challenging content, with teachers providing additional support for pupils who need it. Rather than moving on to new content, our higher attainers will study that content in more depth, and are expected to produce work linked to it of greater depth and flair. Mastery approach to be effective (i.e. students are expected to make at least expected progress, early catch up is essential: we aim to promptly identify and support pupils who fall behind. |
| IMPACT – the long-lasting impact your curriculum will have on our students Our formative assessments are designed to support students in achieving their potential. This means that in lessons pupils are quizzed on prior knowledge in order to embed this knowledge in their long term memory. This frees up their working memory to attend to current learning. We are particularly conscious of the role that literacy and vocabulary plays in unlocking the whole curriculum. We explicitly teach the meaning of subject-specific language, and we expect lessons to contain challenging tasks. The curriculum is broken down into units, which is broken down by term, enabling them to memorise the key knowledge they require in order to be able to perform higher-level functions such as analysis and evaluation. We also encourage all pupils to read widely and provide guided reading lists to students, parents and carers. |
