CIE [IGCSE + GCSE] PRE_RELEASE EXAMPLE PROJECT AND SOLUTION

This is the first of my sample projects that I use with my students to prepare them for completing the pre-release material.

Having completed several years, I have looked at the skills and experiences that students are required to have to be successful in this area of the exam.

The activity has varying degrees of challenge and differentiation within each task. Teachers could further differentiate this by providing pseudocode solutions to each section, or add their own complexity.

Successful lessons have included, students designing their own pseudocode in groups and then swapping with other groups. I try to complete this in groups and pair up strong students with weaker. It also gives me ‘free time’ when I can support the weaker students - often newer students who have completed no coding, or find it difficult.

I follow this up with a practice 20 mark of exam type questions that relate to this task.

Taking one student from each group and working through pseudocode plan with them and then them teaching it back to their group members, is also a useful activity.

For the two parts of the activity, I have included fully working python files for each part. I have annotated these with some of my own notes about how I approach the problem

This is a different activity from the other resource which I have. If you find this one useful, you may want to consider looking at that one also.

Alternatively, this would be useful for staff CPD to see the level of expectation when it comes to coding solutions at this level, or for independent learning for stronger students to complete whilst supporting students with lower ability.