Computer Science

Computer use is foundational to participate in society. Lack of digital literacy will cause a learner to fall into a marginalised group just as surely as a lack of traditional literacy. A digitally illiterate learner will be unable to ascertain the trustworthiness of information found online, will not have the skills required to reach their academic potential in other subjects, and later in life will have difficulty accessing key services provided by the state which increasingly are done online and require the uploading and management of documents and files. It is for this reason that in Key Stage 3 all learners follow a program which includes a wider verity of applications to build familiarity and an understanding of the common user interface elements across software. Learners discuss the trustworthiness of information found online and are encouraged to consider why digital society is organised differently, with different community standards and different social norms compared to the society they encounter in home and school life. Learners are encouraged not to accept things are done differently online “just because” or “that’s the way it is”.

Alongside this, learners follow a blended curriculum designed to support those who will go on to follow either the Computer Science or IT pathway. Once they select their pathways, learners follow a more specialised curriculum focusing on either IT; that is the skills needed to use computers to support other work related or academic tasks or Computer Science – a more academic discipline which seeks to understand how computers operate and how they may be programmed to accomplish new tasks. Whichever pathway a learner selects, woven into the required material is the continued historical and philosophical question of how we got to this point, and how humans use of technology may shape the future.

Learners study computing, a blend of both computer science and IT, for one hour each week. This lends itself to an approach whereby each half term is a discreate sequence of lessons tackling one topic. Each topic is linked to a specific portion of the national curriculum as well as being identified as being linked to either the GCSE in Computer Science or the Cambridge National in IT, if not both. Assessment in year 7 and 8 consists of a summative assessment at the end of each unit, usually in the form of teacher assessment of the final piece of work produced. As well as a multiple-choice test delivered via Microsoft Forms.  As far as possible, the curriculum seeks to alternate between “Skills based” topics, such as image editing, and more theoretical topics such as binary. Both computer science and IT require the learners to demonstrate knowledge both academically and through application and so the alternation right from the start serves to underline the point that computing is an academic subject, much like the natural sciences, and not every lesson will involve practical, skills-based application. Learners are taught in form groups, which means that all classes are mixed ability. Some year seven and eight forms will be taught by members of the maths department however, all resources are produced centrally by the subject co-ordinator and made available to students via Microsoft Teams. Learners are not issued workbooks, rather they complete their written work using Microsoft Teams. This enables work to be viewed remotely, feedback to be provided on a more granular basis and critically embeds basic digital literacy in every computing lesson. This is vital as these basic skills of word processing and file management are foundational to accessing the curriculum later.

Home learning at KS3

In year 7 and 8 students will be a assigned a task every other lesson which will relate to the topic being studied, this should take approximately half an hour. In some units of work, this will be a research-based task to be completed by the learners so that they bring some outside learning into class to facilitate the delivery of that unit, for example in the “Heroes of Computing” unit – a holistic unit of work about data manipulation the learners are asked to quiz family members on how well they recognize various historical computer scientists, such as Alan Turing, from photographs. This data is then manipulated in the following lesson using Microsoft Excel. In other units of work this will be a task designed to embed the learning covered in the preceding two lessons.

What can parents/carers do to support at home?

Parents can support students' digital literacy by encouraging them to do everyday tasks on a desktop computer with a keyboard and mouse whenever possible rather than a phone or a tablet. This will embed everyday digital literacy skills needed for both schoolwork and the workplace.

On a weekly basis, students should also be encouraged to log on to Microsoft Teams and to review, and complete, if necessary, the work from each computing lesson.

However, parents should also be mindful that computers should not be used to excess. Evidence suggests that refraining from the use of computer screens for one hour before bedtime can lead to a better quality of sleep due to the quantity of blue light emitted by these devices.

For those students who have a keen interest in computing they should be encouraged to extend their learning by working on their own projects in in either the block biased programming language Scratch or in the Python programming language.

Parents could also support their children by asking them at the end of each half term to discuss what has been created in that half term’s sequence of computing lessons.

In year 9 learners who choose to follow the computer science or IT pathway are given the opportunity to focus on one of those discreate subjects. Those learners will study their chosen subject for five hours a fortnight.

These lessons build on what has been taught in year 7 and 8 but learners now focus in on those elements which are more applicable to their chosen qualification.

From year 9 onwards the curriculum takes on a spiral characteristic. Everything covered in year 9 will be covered again in year 10 or year 11 in order to facilitate learners moving between ‘pathways’ in year 9. Once we get to the end of year 9 learners are generally considered to have made a firm choice and will only be able to change pathway in exceptional circumstances.

Formal written assessment is a regular feature of lessons in years 9-11 and learners will undertake written assessment papers, initially on a termly basis and with increasing frequency in year 11 in line with whole school policy.

The data from these assessments is used to inform teaching, and while every effort has been made in this document to present an indicative guide to what is being taught at different times of the year, in reality learners in year 10 and 11 will follow a bespoke curriculum with additional units moved around or substituted to address areas of weakness identified from testing. This is possible as the school runs only one class of both computer science and IT each year and so all classes can be taught by the subject co-ordinator.

Learners who opt to follow the Computer Science pathway will be studying the OCR GCSE in Computer Science (J277) The curriculum has been designed so that the continuous thread of python programming runs through the entire scheme of work. Learners will find that through regular python practice they begin to embed the skill of programming, and this in turn gives context to many of the more theoretical units. Python has been chosen as the high-level programming language to be studied due to its similarity to the exam reference language used by OCR to construct the paper two assessment questions, it is also the most popular programming language among learners at this level and a wealth of high-quality, free resources are available for learners who are learning python as their first programming language. Finally, through consultation with contacts who work in industry, I have determined that python is a well-regarded first programming language for the job market and is not regarded as one which promotes what can be described as ‘bad habits’ due to idiosyncratic elements within the syntax of the code. In contrast, a language like Microsoft Visual Basic is often suggested as a beginner programming language but is regarded poorly by professionals working in the sector.

In year 10, learners undertake a practical programming task. This is not formally assessed by the exam board, and no marks are submitted. However, centres must submit a practical programming statement to state that this work has been undertaken by the learners during the course.

Learners who follow the IT Pathway will be studying towards the Cambridge national in IT J836.

Like the Computer Science cohort, the IT learners will also focus on the practical elements of the course first as it is felt that these provide important context for the theoretical elements. However, unlike in IT, learners must complete two 10-hour Non-Examined Assessment tasks which count towards 50% of their final grade. One of these tasks focuses on data manipulation using spreadsheets, the other around using augmented reality to present information.

Application skills in Microsoft Excel are taught in year 9 as this builds directly on skills acquired in year 7 and 8. Theory elements required for the completion of the NEA tasks, as well as assessed as part of the written exam are woven into the practical elements where possible to provide learners with a blended experience.

In year 10, we introduce the second practical element Augmented Reality. The students make use of the online tool XR Plus which will enable them to easily acquire the new skill of designing an augmented reality prototype, and to complete their second coursework element.

Learners will complete their NEA’s in year 11, as the tasks for each year are new and are released on June 1st. Learners will tackle the spreadsheet task before Christmas, and the AR task after Christmas of year 11.

Home learning at KS4

In years 9-11 learners will be set 45 minutes of home learning each week which will often involve consolidating the work done in the lesson with an additional task. In the run up to assessments home learning takes on the familiar concept of the creation of a ‘flipped learning’ poster in which learners are encouraged to revise a topic, using a list of online resources provided, and summarize it on a single side of A4, using a minimum of words. Cartoon drawings pictures and humour. Such activities are both low cognitive load for our learners, while at the same time having been shown in studies to effectively cement understanding of difficult concepts.

What can parents/carers do to support at home?

Parents should be encouraging students to review and consolidate their learning on a regular basis. For both IT and Computer science I suggest creating one page revision summaries for each of the core topics covered using the following approach:

·         You should include a minimum of words to summarise the topic. Do not copy the words from the text.

·         Make full use of the page for each topic by scaling your notes & images appropriately to use of all the space.

·         You must include diagrams, sketches or cartoon doodles to visually represent the topic, try to use humour.

·         Highlight key words and phrases, using underline, highlighter pens. Explain technical terms.

In terms of additional materials

For Computer Science students, if you wish, you may choose to purchase a revision guide, I recommend:

‘The Revision Guide’ GCSE OCR Computer Science for the Grade 9-1 Course.

Published by CGP Books

Further supplemental material may also be found on the OCR website: https://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/computer-science-j277-from-2020/

Finally, from home, students could be encouraged to make notes from the craigndave YouTube videos.

Online resources for those students on the IT pathway are more limited. They can of course make use of things presented on the OCR Website or they could purchase the revision guide produced by Hodder Education.

Parents of year 11 students on the IT pathway should ask them about their progress on their NEA work and encourage them to attend catch up sessions usually offered at lunchtime, afterschool or in the holidays if they fall behind on their project work due to absence.