Being Digital Engineers

Our Vision

Being Champion Digital Engineers at The Weald involves understanding and using computers to think creatively to solve problems, including learning how to write code. Digital Engineers are aware of online risks and learn how to navigate the online world safely. Through developing digital literacy, online safety, and programming, The Weald Digital Engineers are well prepared for the future digital world.

How we plan and teach for being Digital Engineers

At The Weald this year we are focusing on establishing a new Computing Curriculum following the whole-school enquiry approach to learning. Children will learn to deploy essential computing skills in the context of their current enquiry. By doing this, learners have a true purpose for their learning ensuring high levels of motivation and engagement. At The Weald we follow The Teach Computing Curriculum which has been written to support all pupils. Each lesson is sequenced so that it builds on the learning from the previous lesson, and where appropriate, activities are scaffolded so that all pupils can succeed and thrive. Scaffolded activities provide pupils with extra resources, such as visual prompts, to reach the same learning goals as the rest of the class. Exploratory tasks foster a deeper understanding of a concept, encouraging pupils to apply their learning in different contexts and make connections with other learning experiences. As well as scaffolded activities, embedded within the lessons are a range of pedagogical strategies (defined in the ‘Pedagogy’ section of this document), which support making computing topics more accessible.

How we evaluate our learning as digital engineers

Focus groups with children and examples of their work enable an evaluation of how children’s knowledge and skills progress and develop throughout their time at The Weald.