At The Granville School, we believe that all pupils should be equipped to participate fully in our rapidly-changing world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. From the Kindergarten to Year 6, all pupils are taught ICT and Computing by a computer specialist teacher.
The school has an extensive computer network including desktops, two trolleys of iPads and peripherals such as programming kits, digital cameras, sound recorders, web cameras and robots including Beebots.
We aim to deliver a broad and stimulating Computing Curriculum, comprising computer science, digital literacy, the teaching of online safety and information technology. Computer science focuses on learning about computational thinking through exciting and imaginative programming projects. Online safety is very important to us and we spend time every year learning about how to conduct ourselves online and be safe. The majority of our pupils are likely to have access to the web at home, so parents are invited to attend internet safety evenings at the school, run by online safety specialists.
All pupils at the Granville have the opportunity to learn to program computers. The children develop programming skills using a range of languages including Scratch, Kodu, HTML and Python. They design and make computer games, animations and simulations and learn how to control a variety of robots. Girls who want to learn more can attend our coding club.
Our philosophy on learning keyboarding skills is that it starts from the minute a pupil uses a computer as it requires them to use the letters in a different order. Keyboarding is divided into informal and formal. Informal starts in Kindergarten when the children learn to recognise the letters on the keyboard. They continue with keyboard letter recognition in Reception. By Year 1, girls are encouraged to use two hands.
The girls are taught touch-typing as soon as they are ready. For some children this will be in Reception or Year 1. By the end of Autumn Term in Year 2, all girls can be expected to have begun their touch-typing journey. The girls practise their typing skills with hands covered so they cannot see the keyboard. Touch-typing is taught during curriculum time and inclub time.
