Welcome to the 3rd incremental blog in the Established Leader section of the Primary Computing Leadership Journey. The elements in this section are covered in more detail in the brand new whole day face to face course: Leading Primary Computing Module 3. Please click on the infographic below to navigate through the different sections and access all of the resources and training:
As primary school teachers and leaders it is often difficult to engage with secondary schools to whom we are a feeder school. What we hear mostly from pupils who have gone to secondary school when we ask about computing, is that they seem to be re-doing a lot of the learning they did in primary, sometimes to a much more basic level. When we talk to secondary school teachers, we often get the feedback that not only is it necessary to lower the starting point for all pupils due to the massive variance in experience the pupils come up with, but also there seems to be a theme of pupils from primary having good programming skills, but lacking in the more traditional (and necessary!) IT skills such as work processing, creating presentations and using spreadsheets. Have you heard similar things? Or is it different for your area? I’d love you to let us know in the comment section below.
There is a session in the new course for established leaders: Leading Primary Computing Module 3 that covers Key Stage Transition (between all Key Stages, including EYFS), but there is also a short remote course covering specifically the move from KS2 to KS3: Effective computing transition from KS2-3.
We can’t ignore pupils once they have left our primary schools; it is imperative that we look at the bigger picture; ensuring that the entire educational journey for each child is as seamless as possible. There are some very simple things we can put in place that make a huge difference in helping computing to flow more smoothly between key stages. A lot of it is based around communication between teachers and schools for sure, but there are also activities that can really help, for example pre-learning vocabulary and digital literacy skills that allow children to access the learning in the next key stage a lot quicker.
For example, one of the things I always try to expose my year 5 and 6 pupils to are the formal types of algorithm. Throughout primary computing, there are many informal ways of creating and presenting algorithms (storyboards, plan/ designs, ordering pictures, drawing BeeBot arrows on a whiteboard etc) with no stipulation in the National Curriculum of what an algorithm can look like, only the criteria that it must be in order, clear and precise and achieve a specific goal. However, in KS3 pupils are more likely to need to understand and create flowchart algorithms and pseudocode. So, I try to give them more encounters with these in upper key stage 2, so that they are aware of them and can access that area of learning quicker.
Similarly, we can attempt to give our pupils those missing IT skills by introducing more digital activities in our other core and foundation subjects. Going back to the more well-known IT lessons like creating a PowerPoint on your topic work, searching on the internet for history facts, typing up your literacy story, but doing them in those subject’s lesson time, so you’ve still got your computing lesson to cover the computing curriculum. Is this something that would work for you? Or does it seem too much of a stretch at the moment? Tell me in the comments!
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