This lesson focuses on students identifying and writing pseudocode for the Pacman game (on the worksheet). Students can then move on to the pacman challenge game in Scratch with some of the coding already completed so they can transfer the pseudocode they have written into code. The aim of the lesson is for students to see the relevance of pseudocode and planning before launching straight into coding. The pacman challenge game is available at Barney Game Studios: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/162290425/

This lesson introduces the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and explains how the clock speed, cache size and number of cores affects the performance of a computer with animated examples. There is a cloze worksheet for students to complete which provides an opportunity to take notes.

This lesson teaches students about goal seek and how it works in Excel. Students imagine they have just won a million on a "Who wants to be a millionaire?". They use goal seek to work out which country they would rather win the show in. When they have finished, they can then use an online currency converter to find out today's rates and then see how that changes things. This can lead to discussions on how small changes in currency rates can have big impact when transferring money between countries and depending on the ability of your class you can even end up discussing what causes exchange rates to rise and fall - particularly topical at moment given Brexit and the new US President and their impact on the markets.

This is an assembly I did on teamwork and the importance of being a good team player. It has a starting slide that asks students to review four images and identify the common theme. I then show several examples of teamwork, i.e. ants working together to create a bridge, meerkats defending against a snake and a great quote from the England team captain from the recent World Cup talking about the importance of teamwork as opposed to having standout players. There are then two videos of an F1 pit crew… the first one to demonstrate the speed at which they work and then the second one is slowed right down so pupils can see the whole team working together, each with their own job and dependent on each other to achieve the same aim. I then finished posing some questions regarding what makes a good team player and provide some guidance on things they could do next time they are working in a group/team.

An excel spreadsheet that can be played with a class as a quick recap to ensure they can identify and use cell references and understand that the letter (column) goes before the number (row). When I play this with my classes, students take turns in giving a cell reference which I then click on to display the square underneath. You could play this competitively by dividing the class into two teams and seeing who can sink the most battleships.

Two worksheets with questions based around news articles regarding economics. Used with my GCSE Business & Economics students to check understanding of the impact of interest rates, exchange rates, manufacturing output and infrastructure spending on the economy.

Short activity that could be used as a starter to encourage students to work through some code snippets in their head and write down the output.

This worksheet is allows students to work independently to interpret the code from the Barney the Westie Scratch game and answer questions on the worksheet to demonstrate understanding. The game uses IF statements, repeat loops, variables and a subroutine (broadcast). When they understand the code, they can then adapt and extend the game by : • Changing the variables on when the bone appears and how fast it falls • Barney is a fussy Westie so take away points when the bone hits the grass • Add other objects/sprites to the game, e.g. a special bone that appears randomly and is worth double-points or more! • Increase the difficulty of the game when Barney scores more than 10 points. Hint: add an IF statement on the code that makes the bone fall so that if the score is greater than 10, the value of “y” is larger. More resources can be found at my TES shop: www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/jonmward The Barney the Westie game can be found on Barney Game Studios: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/104492249/

Three pseudocode challenges for Computing students for the festive period! Now with possible solutions/answers.

A computing timeline I produced to go around my classroom like a frieze. It covers Babbage's difference engine in 1822 up to 2017. I use it when teaching to show how technology has evolved over a relatively short space of time.

Looks at British democracy from the Magna Carta to the suffragette movement and then on to the UK-EU referendum. The final slides cover the importance of being an informed voter to play a full part in democracy.

These are three mimics I created using Mimic Creator that can be used in Flowol. These should appear in Flowol when the files & folders in the zip are copied across to the mimics folder. There are worksheets and solutions with each mimic and a short video showing the ride.

This is an activity based lesson to investigate the role of the government in boosting the economy. The students break into groups of 4 to form a new government. There are four roles: Prime minister, chancellor, minister for business and home secretary. They work through a series of scenarios and have to argue their position. For each scenario, each person receives a "briefing" letter from their dept that outlines their position. They have 5 minutes to discuss within the group and then the prime minister needs to record their decision on the worksheet and justify it to their electorate. At the end of each scenario I get the prime minister in each group to stand up and justify their position to the rest of the class. They then see if their decision paid off on the powerpoint. The scenarios cover interest rate cuts & rises, investment in human capital, tax cuts and infrastructure spending.

I use these two GCSE Computer Science pub-style quizzes for revision purposes with my GCSE Computer Science classes. The students form pub quiz teams and we go through each round, with a different team marking their answers after each round. The two booster sessions are for paper 1 and paper 2. I run through these quick 5-10 minute boosters before the pupils go to their exam as a final prep.

This is a Revision tool based on the old Blockbusters game format with a gameboard that can be customised with your own questions and can be used as a whole class revision resource or in pairs on their own computers. The player selects the hexagon and the question automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. The answer can be revealed by clicking the “Reveal Answer” button. The hexagon can then be turned blue or white depending on who won the hexagon or black if they got it wrong. The gameboard is currently loaded with GCSE revision business-related questions but can be changed by clicking on the “Questions” sheet and changing the information. After updating the Questions and Answers, click “Reset Gameboard” to rebuild the gameboard with your new questions and answers. If you have answers starting with the same letter then you can enter two letters to differentiate your answers. This opens the game to more possibilities. Note: This excel spreadsheet uses macros in order to work. Please enable them upon loading the spreadsheet.

This is a Revision tool based on the old Blockbusters game format with a gameboard that can be customised with your own questions and can be used as a whole class revision resource or in pairs on their own computers. The player selects the hexagon and the question automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. The answer can be revealed by clicking the “Reveal Answer” button. The hexagon can then be turned blue or white depending on who won the hexagon or black if they got it wrong. The gameboard is currently loaded with GCSE revision computer-related questions but can be changed by clicking on the “Questions” sheet and changing the information. After updating the Questions and Answers, click “Reset Gameboard” to rebuild the gameboard with your new questions and answers. If you have answers starting with the same letter then you can enter two letters to differentiate your answers. This opens the game to more possibilities. Note: This excel spreadsheet uses macros in order to work. Please enable them upon loading the spreadsheet.

This lesson introduces binary and compares it to denary. A method of converting denary to binary is then worked through and there are two worksheet activities for students to complete on binary conversion and arithmetic.

This lesson introduces von Neumann architecture briefly and then focuses on inputs and outputs. Students explore the input and outputs devices that would be used in a self-service checkout and several other scenarios.