ICT in key stages 1 and 2
The National Curriculum sets out the statutory entitlement of what children should learn. This applies to ICT from KS1 to KS3 and expectations of ICT as an area of learning are set out in the programmes of study. The national curriculum indicates that children should also be given opportunities to apply and develop their capability across the curriculum to support their learning. At KS1 Teachers should use their judgement to decide where it is appropriate to teach the use of ICT across subjects. At KS2 there are statutory requirements to use ICT in all subjects apart from PE.
The programmes of study for ICT group the knowledge, skills and understanding that children require into themes. Although these themes are described separately in reality these are often merge.
Exchanging and sharing information
This theme is about children being able to communicate effectively with others through the sharing of information and in the presentation of their ideas in electronic format. It is about children understanding the strengths and dangers of electronic communication technologies and being aware of, and having an empathy with, an intended audience. It is about being able to draw upon the multimodality that ICT offers in order to meet the needs of an intended audience. It is about being able to utilize a wide range of electronic formats such as digital images, digital video, text, sound and animations in their work. Exchanging and Sharing Information is about children being able to communicate within and beyond the school including dialogue with experts. An important and growing issue within this theme is that of e-safety where children must develop the knowledge and understanding that will enable them to stay safe on-line.
Finding things out
This theme is about children understanding and using electronic information to handle data and undertake research. It is about understanding that vast amounts of information exist, and about developing effective enquiry skills in order to access information with a view to relevance, bias and accuracy. It is about children understanding the strengths of storing, ordering, presenting and rapidly sorting data in electronic formats, and the importance of this in commerce and society. It is about the use of appropriate technologies and knowing what questions to ask and tools to use in order to solve a problem. It is about children developing enquiry skills to plan, design and implement an investigation using appropriate tools, and predicting possible and unlikely outcomes. In this strand children will develop reasoning skills to determine the quality, reliability and validity of evidence, data and information.
Developing ideas and making things happen
This theme is about children understanding and using elements of control technology, sensing, modelling and simulations in their learning. It is about them making changes and understanding that they can explore options to answer “what if” type questions. It is about children solving problems by prediction, trial and error and in refining instructions following feedback to control something. It is about them knowing that a simulation can represent real or imaginary situations and that this allows you to try things out that may be difficult to do in real life. It is about children identify patterns, sequences, and cause and effect and that solutions can be modelled using ICT tools.
Reviewing and modifying work as it progresses
This theme, which should be integrated into the other themes, is about how children evaluate their learning and that of others and how they use that evaluation to inform further developments. It is about them being clear about learning intentions and evaluating their progress against them through questioning, discussion and evaluation and using the outcomes of these to inform future action. It is about testing and refining, assessing, justifying, predicting and hypothesising, problem solving and checking for accuracy. It is about children understanding the advantages, dangers and moral issues in using ICT to manipulate and to present information to potentially large unknown audiences.