Primary Computing Knowledge Organisers

With Ofsted focus now on pupils acquiring and retaining subject knowledge, many schools are now using Knowledge Organisers in the classroom.

What are they?

A knowledge organiser is a document containing key facts and information that pupils can use to help acquire basic knowledge and understanding of a topic or concept.

Most will include:

  • key facts presented in a format that is easy to take in
  • key vocabulary or technical terms and what they mean
  • images such as charts or diagrams

What they include depends on the subject. In Computing, for example, a ‘Programming’ knowledge organiser includes definitions of sequence, selection and repetition along with images of Scratch blocks given as examples.

New for 2022: We’ve added ‘Sticky Knowledge’ resources too!

computing knowledge organisers

How can we use them?

There are lots of different ways they can be used in the classroom but here are some ideas:

  1. Use the knowledge organiser for regular revision and assessment. Create mini quizzes
  2. Use them for discussion; talk through them and ask higher-level ‘why’ questions to stretch and challenge
  3. Identify gaps in knowledge and understanding
  4. Determine whether the children know more than the knowledge organiser contains and encourage them to make their own additions
  5. Improve teacher subject knowledge
  6. Link knowledge organisers to enable children to make links between topics. For example, draw comparisons between an ‘Algorithms’ unit and a ‘Programming’ unit. What concepts/vocabulary are the same?
  7. Use the them as a handy vocabulary reminder. Keep them accessible and encourage the children to use the correct vocabulary when discussing their work

Get Primary Computing Knowledge Organisers

If you have a current iCompute Primary Computing Curriculum licence, we have uploaded knowledge organisers for all of our KS1 and KS2 primary computing units to iCompute online; providing coverage for all strands of the National Curriculum for Computing at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

If not, you can download a template to adapt for your own use here.

About Liane O'Kane

Liane is a Computer Scientist (BSc (Hons)), Software Engineer & author of iCompute which supports schools with a computing curriculum and resources for teaching computing in the EYFS, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. ERA Awards Finalist 2016-2021, BETT Awards 2014-2018. Featured on BBC Bitesize for Primary Computing and The Hour of Code (code.org)
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