ICT
Aims and objectives
ICT is changing the lives of everyone. Through teaching ICT we equip children to participate in a rapidly-changing world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. We enable them to find, explore, analyse, exchange and present information. We also focus on developing the skills necessary for children to be able to use information in a discriminating and effective way. ICT skills are a major factor in enabling children to be confident, creative and independent learners.
The aims of ICT are to enable children:
- to develop ICT capability in finding, selecting and using information;
- to use ICT for effective and appropriate communication;
- to monitor and control events both real and imaginary;
- to apply hardware and software to creative and appropriate uses of information;
- to apply their ICT skills and knowledge to their learning in other areas;
- to use their ICT skills to develop their language and communication skills;
- to explore their attitudes towards ICT and its value to them and society in general. For example, to learn about issues of security, confidentiality and accuracy.
Teaching and learning style
As the aims of ICT are to equip children with the skills necessary to use technology to become independent learners, the teaching style that we adopt is as active and practical as possible. At times we do give children direct instruction on how to use hardware or software in 'skills' lessons but we often use ICT capabilities to support teaching across the curriculum. So, for example, children might research a history topic by using a CD-ROM, or they might investigate a particular issue on the Internet. Children who are learning Science or Design Technology might use the computer to model a problem or to analyse data. We encourage the children to explore ways in which the use of ICT can improve their results, for example, how a piece of writing can be edited or how the presentation of a piece of work can be improved by moving text about etc.
We recognise that all classes have children with widely differing ICT abilities. This is especially true when some children have access to ICT equipment at home, while others do not. We provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability and experience of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways, by:
- setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
- setting tasks of increasing difficulty (not all children complete all tasks);
- grouping children by ability in the room and setting different tasks for each ability group;
- providing resources of different complexity that are matched to the ability of the child;
- using classroom assistants to support the work of individual children or groups of children.
ICT curriculum planning
The school uses the national scheme of work for ICT as the basis for its curriculum planning. We have adapted the national scheme to the circumstances of the school.
We carry out the curriculum planning in ICT in three phases (long-term, medium-term and short-term). The long-term plan maps the ICT topics that the children study in each term during each key stage. The ICT subject leader works this out in conjunction with teaching colleagues in each year group, and the children often study ICT as part of their work in other subject areas. Our long-term ICT plan shows how teaching units are distributed across the year groups, and how these fit together to ensure progression within the curriculum plan.
Our medium-term plans, which we have adopted from the national scheme of work, give details of each unit of work for each term. They identify the key learning objectives for each unit of work and stipulate the curriculum time that we devote to it. The ICT subject leader is responsible for keeping and reviewing these plans.
The subject teacher is responsible for writing the short-term plans with the ICT component of each lesson. These plans list the specific learning objectives of each lesson. The class teacher keeps these individual plans and s/he and the ICT subject leader often discuss them on an informal basis.
The topics studied in ICT are planned to build upon prior learning. While we offer opportunities for children of all abilities to develop their skills and knowledge in each unit, we also build planned progression into the scheme of work, so that the children are increasingly challenged as they move up through the school.
