Starting with projects

An alternative approach is to start with ideas for individual projects, perhaps with each being half a term in length.

If this is the approach you’ve used until now for planning ICT, you might find that you can use many of your existing ICT projects to cover some of the Computing curriculum. This is particularly true for the information technology and digital literacy elements, although you may have to make some changes to allow space for the new computer science content, including the additional expectations for programming.

Some of your existing units will perhaps need modifying to focus on knowledge and understanding rather than skills. For example, if you have a current unit on email, that could be modified to develop pupils’ understanding of how networks, including the Internet, work, how they provide services such as email, and how this can be used for communication and collaboration.

You could also cover key issues in e-safety such as spam, malware in attachments, and spoofed links.

A project-based approach allows ample scope for exploiting the connections between the different aspects of Computing, perhaps using the ‘foundations, applications, implications’ model as a starting point for planning some of these units of work.

Projects could be linked to other areas of the curriculum, perhaps using themes from your school’s ‘creative curriculum’ to suggest related Computing topics. Similarly, this approach would work if you’ve decided to adopt an embedded or integrated approach to Computing, with Computing content covered through topics drawn from other curriculum areas.

For example, there are links between algorithms and maths. Creating a Scratch script for a maths game that tests a player on adding fractions would develop an understanding of the algorithm for fractions, as well as the sequencing, selection, repetition and variables requirements of the Computing programme of study.