Computer science

Leaning Journey

Computer Science

Objectives in computer science

In year 7:

Students cover a range of topics to give them a strong foundation on which to build on for years 8 and 9. Topics include e-safety, to enable students to protect themselves on-line and conduct themselves appropriately and programming, where students learn to deconstruct problems, develop computational thinking and problem solving skills and write programs.

Projects covered:

  • E-Safety – programming – personal digital devices – hardware – digital authoring – modelling

In year 8:

Students cover a challenging range of topics to prepare them for Y9 and GCSE computing. Topics range from number systems where students learn to convert between decimal, binary and hexadecimal and perform some simple calculations to Logic Gates and Boolean Logic to get a better idea of how computers work and why they use binary.

Projects covered:

  • Number systems – logic gates and truth tables – data (images, sound and text) – programming –  website development.

In year 9:

Students cover a broad and challenging range of topics to prepare them for their Y9 standardised assessments and GCSE computing. Topics include programming, hardware, networks, algorithms and Pseudo code. Students will also develop their creativity and analytical thinking skills completing a creative project. Students will have a standardised test at the end of the year.

Projects covered:

  • Social media in society – Von Neumann’s Architecture – data types – logic gates and truth tables – algorithms and pseudo code – networks and text-based programming

In year 7

  • Solve a basic computational problem with guidance
  • Use basic sequence and selection in Scratch
  • Create code in a written language, such as Python, to perform basic operations on variables

In year 8

  • Solve a basic computational problem
  • Use sequence and selection in Scratch
  • Create code in a written language, such as Python, to perform basic operations on variables
  • Show some understanding of lists/arrays and how to use them in Scratch

In year 9

  • Independently solve a basic computational problem
  • Have a good understanding of programming techniques in a written language such as Python, using both selection and repetition
  • Have a good understanding of lists/arrays in Scratch and some understanding of how this relates to one-dimensional arrays in a written language such as Python
  • Have tested for basic functionality
  • Give a good explanation of how a program worksv