Trotts Hill Primary School and Nursery
At Trotts Hill we aim to ensure that all children become digitally literate in this ever changing technical world.
Our curriculum is designed around four key areas, as outlined in the National Curriculum, computer science, information technology, digital literacy and online safety. The combination of these areas allows children to gain skills to develop ideas that they are able to use throughout their lives in a digital world and leave primary school computer literate. It is our intention to enable children to find, explore, analyse and present information using technology creatively.
Staff are encouraged to model positive use of technology and ensure their lessons are accessible to all pupils. We want children to be fluent in a range of tools and hope that by the end of Upper Key Stage 2, children will be independent and confident to apply their technological knowledge.
We are highly motivated to ensure that all children will leave Trotts Hill with a strong and secure understanding of how to stay safe online.
Online Safety
Internet Guidance for Parents
Please read the guidelines for parents. The guidelines are linked to different games and apps.
Please read this terms Internet Safety Newsletter.
Digital Leaders 2023-2024
The new DL's met for the first time today to discuss their important roles in class. They also have an important job coming up of helping to create a new hall display. We discussed the title for the display and creative ideas. To help gain information for the display, each DL was given a survey to carry out with two people from their class about Digital Footprints.
Purple Mash
We use the Purple Mash platform (amongst others) to support our learning across the whole school.
Today, Year 3, learnt how to include timers in their coding activities.
This week we celebrated Safer Internet Day in class and in assembly. The theme for 2024 is ‘Inspiring change? Making a difference, managing influence and navigating change online’.
All classes reviewed how to stay safe online and watched a video of top tips produced by the Digital Leaders. We also looked at how technology has evolved over the years (there was life before iphones!). Finally all classes discussed how the internet can be used for positive reasons and talked about charities and being kind online.
We looked at how technology has evolved over the year and then made videos which could promote a cause online, using the internet to inspire.
Today, Year 3 continued learning about the features of a PowerPoint presentation. They explored the design tools, added extra slides and inserted media.
Year 3 have been learning about Desktop Publishing in computing. They have learnt to format text, add images, save and retrieve learning.
In Year 4, we have started to look at photo editing. We talked about how images we see online are not necessarily the ones taken by cameras. The children cropped photos to change the main focus of the image, rotated images that were the wrong way round and experimented with colour, applying different tones to create different effects.
In, arguably, the most important lesson of the year, the children worked collaboratively to explain the SMART rules. The rules provide them with clear guidance on how to keep themselves safe online.
Year 6 have been learning how to use Excel. The unit culminated in using a spreadsheet to model a real life situation, where children planned an event, using their knowledge of formulae to calculate costs and profits.
Year 6 programmed micro:bits to perform a variety of tasks, including acting as a compass, a counter and a step-counter which gave positive messages when certain milestones were reached.
Year 5 simulated real digitally controlled machines by writing code to instruct components to make a series of light sequences or activate motors.
Year 3 were introduced to finding and adding information to cells in a spreadsheet. They followed instructions to create pictures.
The year 4 units of work in computing have really inspired the class. They have achieved excellent outcomes and worked enthusiastically. In spreadsheets, the children learnt how to use formula as well as inputting data. In logo, the children were able to programme their turtles with detailed code to create different repeating patterns, In photo editing, the children used a professional package to manipulate photos. This unit was really interesting as it led to discussions about how what we see in advertising isn't always real.
In Spring 2, year 2 learnt about spreadsheets. They created pictograms physically and compared this with creating a pictogram on the computer. The children were able to understand the benefits of creating spreadsheets digitally. Throughout the unit, the children practised using the copy and paste tool as well as the totalling tool. Year 2 were able to produce their own pictogram on Purple Mash using 2Calculate after collecting their own data from the class.
We created a webpage and then simulated a key word search. Points were given for the appearance on the word in headings, paragraphs and links. We considered what improvements we could make to improve the ranking of our page.
Year 5 have created an algorithm to make repeated patterns rapidly.
Year 3 used simple commands in Logo, including repeat and forwards, to create simple shapes.
Year 5 have been adding formulae and using a counting tool on a spreadsheet.
This half term, year 4 have been working hard to learn new skills using 2Logo. Children have been able to follow simple instructions including the commands FD, BK, LT, RT, SETPC, SETPS, PU and PD as well as use these commands to create their own letters and shapes.
In Spring 1, Year 6 studied Networks. We learnt the difference between the WWW and the internet, discovered what a LAN and a WAN is, researched the age of the internet and reflected on what the future might hold for technology, as well as how much it has already developed in our lifetimes.
To begin Safer Internet Day, the digital leaders led a whole school assembly about being safe on the internet. They explained what the day was all about and discussed that this year, the school would be focusing on being respectful when playing games online. The digital leaders read out different scenarios of messages online and asked the rest of the school to decide if they thought that the final message was acceptable to send or not. They were also able to come up with alternative messages that could have been sent instead.
Children learnt lots about keeping safe on the internet and being respectful online while playing games. Each class completed some learning around the theme 'All fun and games? Exploring respect and relationships online'.
The children created and sent emails explaining key E-safety rules. They sent these to a partner and then had to read the rules and respond. The children also created an E-Safety quiz and sent these to a friend via email.
We are PROUD:
