The digital world is all around us and it’s important for our children to learn about it, to feel confident and proficient, but safe too.
We use apps, create music, learn about programming and coding, enjoy photo editing, use the internet for research, plus delve into word processing, blogging, emails and basic programmes to start to get the children familiar with what they will find in their future.
We use the Teach Computing scheme of work as our main resource but do not necessarily follow this exactly as listed. In addition, we also provide cross curricular units of study.
The younger children at St John's enjoy undertaking the beginning steps of programming by using programmable floor robots such as Beebots. They then move on to using more complex programming apps, such as Lightbot and Cargobot. These apps allow the children to write, test and debug programs.
In Key Stage Two the children advance on to writing code using the MIT developed program, Scratch. The older children also have the opportunity to take part in a weekly Coding Club, where they can program and use our school robots; Sphero and Dash & Dot.
As well as programming, the children at St John’s enjoy using our iPads across the whole curriculum. This could be anything from conducting research in a History lesson, taking pictures of a science experiment or using a musical composition app.
