Liane is a Computer Scientist (BSc (Hons)), Software Engineer and author of iCompute. iCompute helps thousands of schools around the world teach computing with a comprehensive primary curriculum. She has been nominated for prestigious ERA & BETT Awards each year since launching in 2014 in recognition for expertise and innovation in computer science and edTech. iCompute is featured on BBC Bitesize for Primary Computing and The Hour of Code.

Free Halloween Computing Lesson

Create a Halloween Web page with HTML

Free Halloween Computing Lesson

Click to download

Teachers and pupils alike love a themed lesson so I’ve created a new activity for Halloween computing that teaches basic HTML/CSS for pupils aged 9-11.

Each term, I create free themed computing lessons and I’ve written another step-by-step lesson plan and some teacher/pupil computing resources that I’m using in my computing classes and have added to iCompute’s primary computing schemes of work.  This activity has been adapted from a cross-curricular computing lesson in iCompute Across the Curriculum.

Halloween is approaching and you’re having a party! Using basic HTML and CSS your pupils will create an invitation to their party in the form of a web page.  In this activity children learn how HTML formats web content and CSS styles it using age-appropriate syntax and tools.

Halloween Invitation

Includes HTML tutorial

Ideas for differentiation, extension and enrichment are included in the lesson plan.  Plus HTML Mozilla Thimble tutorial for teacher and pupil support. Lots of opportunities to be inspired and get creative!

Cheat Sheet

Check out my other free seasonal primary computing lesson plans and resources elsewhere on this blog and by visiting icompute-uk.com/free-stuff.html

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Halloween 🎃 Computational Thinking Puzzles

Scarily Good Free Resources for Primary Computing

Help your pupils get dead  good at problem solving using key computational thinking skills such as abstraction, decomposition, generalisation and pattern spotting with our free Halloween themed puzzles.

Computational thinking lies at the heart of the National Curriculum for Computing and our best selling (Educational Resources Awards nominated) series of Computational Thinking Puzzle books 1-4 help pupils independently practice the skills they learn in their computing lessons.

Grab yourself a treat with our free puzzles for Halloween.  Visit www.icompute-uk.com for more free themed lesson plans and resources to support teaching primary computing.

lesson image

Download the puzzles

Editable & Printable Scratch Blocks

Scratch Classroom Display & Unplugged Activities

iCompute Scratch 3.0

Scratch 3.0 Blocks

This version is for Scratch 3.0 and includes all category blocks along with Extensions: Microbit, Makey Makey, Video Sensing, Pen, LEGO WeDo, LEGO EV3, Music, Text to Speech and Translate.

Available to download by clicking/tapping the Periodic Table of Scratch 3 Blocks image (see below).  The blocks can be edited and scaled using image editing tools (e.g. Illustrator, Inkscape, Vectr).  The blocks are also provided in .png format.

It’s important that children be given opportunities to interact with physical programming blocks to help them understand both their function and the underlying concepts.  I use them in groups for the children to program me and/or each other as well as programming using Scratch 3 itself.

Scratch Blocks

Click to Download

Published by iCompute and licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.

Also available in the same format are Scratch 2.0 blocks and Scratch Jr blocks from this post.

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Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Improve Teaching and Learning

I’ve been busy this last few months creating two units for our computing curriculum about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. It has, however, been less busier than usual creating the content because I’ve been using AI to help me!

I have access to and have used a variety of AI tools. I have ChatGBT 4, DALL-E, Adobe Illustrator, Canva, Vyond and SchoolAI. All of which have AI features.

Of all the tools I used, SchoolAI has been the quickest, most intuitive and most effective for teaching purposes in reducing workload and helping create challenging, engaging, activities for my pupils.

I started with the Syllabus and Course Outline tools, inputing the unit objectives for a series of progressive 6 week lessons. With this as a spring board, I adapted where necessary and then used it as a basis for creating 6 lesson plans. Using high quality, specific, prompting, the tool helped create engaging hands-on practical learning activities, which I tweaked by generating differentiated (easier/harder) activities.

I used the worksheet tool, which also incorporated generated AI images. Build Your Own for worksheets and storyboard templates. I created my own AI space for pupils to engage with a Turing Test (where children ask an AI chatbot questions to find out whether they’re talking to a human or not). I also used the rubric tool for the end of unit assessment guidance.

I’m incredibly impressed with SchooAIs potential. Used judiciously, it could transform teaching and learning. As with all AI tools, it’s all about the prompting! An AI’s output is directly related to the quality of the input. So what you ask SchoolAI tools to do, should be well thought out, specific and, crucially, checked and adapted where necessary.

Artificial Intelligence Unit

Get an SchoolAI account yourself and explore the possibilities. Also, visit icompute-uk.com for the AI and Machine Learning units for Year 4 and Year 6 that AI helped me create.