The Ofsted Inspection Framework [3] came into effect in September 2019. With the emphasis on ‘offering a curriculum that is broad, rich and deep’, here I take a look at its implications for Computing Subject Leaders.
Download my full guide on how iCompute can help your school demonstrate a quality computing education through the ‘Three I’s’ and during a Deep Dive.
Continue readingHere’s at iCompute Headquarters there’s nothing we like more than creating Christmas themed resources. I’ve been having a great time designing and developing new lesson plans, tutorials and programs for this year’s festive season.
My latest offering is an absolute Christmas cracker! A coding tutorial for Microsoft Kodu. Kodu is helping Santa deliver presents on Christmas Eve but needs your pupil’s help coding him to deliver the presents to the right houses. I’ve made a Kodu tutorial for your pupils to use that will guide them through the coding process before letting them get on with completing the activity and then having some festive fun by making it their own.
Get the lesson plan & tutorial
Another free Christmas computing resource helps your pupils get jolly good at problem solving using key computational thinking skills such as abstraction, decomposition, generalisation and pattern spotting.
Computational thinking lies at the heart of the National Curriculum for Computing and our best selling (ERA and BETT nominated) schemes of work support schools teach it creatively and well.
Grab yourself a gift with our free stuff for Christmas. Visit www.icompute-uk.com for more free Christmas themed lesson plans and resources to support teaching primary computing.
Click to download
Ofsted will be “deep diving” into a selection of subjects during their inspections with the “curriculum at the heart of inspection” focusing on curriculum intent, implementation and impact. I’ve previously written an article on this called inspecting computing for computing subject leaders. Now, with the benefit of feedback from schools using iCompute who’ve undergone a deep dive for computing – and widely published Aide Memoir and Inspector subject training guidance provided by Ofsted – I explore what a deep dive for computing looks like with the aim of helping prepare computing leads.
You can download a copy of my comprehensive guide to the Ofsted Framework and Ofsted Deep Dives for Computing at the end of this post. It’s been updated to include dozens of Ofsted Deep Dive questions our schools have been asked and the school friendly questions suggested by Ofsted along with details of how iCompute helps schools answer them.
Regular readers will know that I’ve previously created a 6 week coding unit for pupils aged 9-11 using BitsBox. Bitsbox uses a simplified version of Javascript, and provides tools that enable pupils to develop their own apps.
It’s a great stepping stone from the blocks-based languages and environments your pupils may have already mastered (E.g. Scratch, App Inventor, Tynker etc) on to text-based languages.
I’ve been researching pedagogies to support computing mastery and PRIMM is a programming pedagogy developed by Dr Sue Sentence and the Computing Education team at Kings College London based on the notion that its difficult to become successful at writing code if you cannot read it.
I have created a Christmas themed step-by-step lesson plan that uses Bitsbox and I’m using the PRIMM approach for teaching programming.
PRIMM stands for Predict | Run | Investigate | Modify | Make. The approach enables teachers to support pupils by giving them some code that they first understand and then build upon towards making their own.
It’s a great way to structure a lesson and think it’ll make a real difference to those pupils who have difficulty understanding some programming concepts.
Feel free to download this lesson and try PRIMM in your own classroom.
Use the PRIMM programming approach to develop a program from a Christmas gift catching game into a new game
Challenge your pupils to design algorithms and program the game using a text-based programming language, variables and functions.
As usual, lots of opportunities for differentiation. For instance, less able pupils could use pupil support cards (see support resource which is included in the pack) and/or write a more simple version. Your more able pupils could:
Ideas for differentiation, extension and enrichment are included in the lesson plan. Lots of opportunities to be inspired and get creative.
Check out my other coding lesson that uses BitsBox at https://www.icompute-uk.com/news/coding-apps/
Find out more about PRIMM and the research at https://icomp.site/primm
Explore computing pedagogy further aqt:
