Curriculum: ICT

At St Ambrose, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an integral part of the primary school curriculum. It is taught as a discrete subject and is reinforced through cross-curricular software appropriate to the children’s age group. From the Early Years all have access to various equipment including digital cameras, a microscope, walkie talkies, remote control toys and metal detectors and receive at least one formal ICT lesson each week.

The scheme of work is based on the National Curriculum and is supplemented by enrichment activities, which engages all learners, challenges children’s thinking and takes the children’s learning further.

The I.C.T. department has a dedicated room of 24 workstations networked to a secure server which allows internet access and wireless connectivity. There are further workstations in classrooms around the school which have a wide variety of age appropriate software.

All pupils have opportunities to apply their skills in various school activities. Pupils produce a school newspaper during newspaper club, take part in multimedia projects and produce posters for events and wall displays.

By the end of Key Stage 2, St Ambrose pupils have had the experience of a wide range of I.C.T. activities and software packages, preparing them to confidently meet the challenges at the secondary stage of their education.

Each year group covers various topics these include:

The Early Years children are introduced to a variety of ICT resources including an Interactive whiteboard, metal detectors, walkie talkies, digital cameras, video recorders, remote control vehicles and robots with age appropriate keyboards and mice.

Infant 1: General computer awareness, technology around us, assembling text to label pictures and the children learn how to represent information graphically.

Infant 2: Using pictures and text to write stories and become more adept at using the keyboard.

Prep.1:  MS Word text and graphics manipulation are introduced to data bases and use the internet to research various science and history topics.

Prep. 2: The children use the computers to write for different audiences and use I.C.T. to create charts and graphs.

Prep. 3: Boys develop their skills using Microsoft Publisher.  Google Earth is used to investigate the world.  Map skills are practised using the Ordnance Survey website ‘Mapzone’.

The boys take part in the RSPC School Bird Watch Survey and they have entered their results online and produced charts/diagrams of their results. Boys also use the ‘Paint’ programme to design their ideal playground.

Prep. 4: Boys learn to use MS Power point for presentations to research various subjects. They use ICT to produce a school newspaper and use publisher for producing books for the infants.  They have supervised use of the internet to research WWII projects and use Google Earth to find information about China.