Preparing for the 2014 Computing Curriculum: KS1 and KS2

From primary curriculum to "I can" statements, resources and lesson activities

Created by Pete Dring
last edited Feb 28 2014 by Pete Dring

These are the resources used at the York CAS Primary hub meeting on 12th Feb at the National STEM Centre.

Disclaimer These resources contain ideas on assessment and ways of breaking down the curriculum into “I can” statements. These are not official documents and I’m sure that people will have better ideas - I’m just trying to create & share something that is helpful - I welcome any comments, feedback & suggestions.

Thanks Many thanks to the York Primary Computing Focus group who helped break down the curriculum and discuss these ideas. Some of Mark Dorling’s ideas, Matthew Parry’s work, Miles Berry’s resources and Jane Waite’s assessment ideas are referenced here - many thanks. Do let me know if I’ve missed anyone or misreferenced anything…

Overview We set up 10 tables with different activities and worked around each one. There’s a lot of resources here - I hope some of them can be adapted to be useful elsewhere.

These resources are not intended to give a detailed set of training on how to teach the whole curriculum, just an overview of what it involves with a particular focus on planning activities that let students hit the higher level understanding skills in Bloom’s taxonomy rather than just loads of facts to recall.

It builds on Miles Berry’s excellent booklet: Computing in the National Curriculum: A guide for primary teachers. We gave every primary teacher a copy when they arrived to the York hub meeting: http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/index.php?id=primary-national-curriculum-guidance

• Table 1: KS1 Information Technology (IT)

• Table 2: KS1 Digital Literacy (DL)

• Table 3: KS1 Computer Science (CS)

• Table 4: KS2 Information Technology (IT)

• Table 5: KS2 Digital Literacy (DL)

• Table 6: KS2 Computer Science (CS)

• Table 7: Questions and Answers

• Table 8: Key terms

• Table 9: Library

• Table 10: Demo Zone

Level: Beginner

Duration: We did this in a 2 hour hub meeting with an introduction at the start and time to plug upcoming courses / revisit any table at the end. It worked out as about 6 minutes per table. Enough time for people to get an overview, but not nearly enough go go through everything in detail. There’s enough material here to devote much more time per table, but the aim of the session was to give an overview and introduction to lead into future training.

Teaches: These resources don’t cover a scheme of work or assessment (although I’ve included some thoughts on assessment after levels, as people always ask about it on the Q&A table).

I wanted people to leave with:

• Something to take away (CAS Primary booklet, free posters & resources to download)

• Something to try out (Online resources to try out with minimal preparation)

• Someone to contact (Sign up for CAS Online and make some connections with other local teachers)

• Some dates in the diary (Find out about upcoming courses in the local area. You’ll need to change these to make them suitable to your area if you use these resources)