GCSE Computer Science Theory Revision - Last Minute Paper 2 Practice Covering All Key Theory

This is a document designed as late revision for paper 2 of the GCSE Computer Science (AQA specification, but applicable to edexcel and other boards too).

The revision booklet covers the following topics/questions, and should take students around 2 hours to complete the filling in blanks, with longer needed if they redraft the responses
:
Section 1 – Data Representation
a) How do character sets work?
b) How do bitmap images work?
c) How do sound files work?
Section 2 – Computer System
a) How do hard disk drives work?
b) How do solid state drives work?
c) How does a CD work?
d) What are the different types of memory?
e) What are the main components of a CPU?
f) What affects the performance of the CPU?
g) What are the different types of software?
Section 3 – Networks
a) What are protocols?
b) What is the TCP/IP model?
c) What does the application layer do?
d) What are the different considerations when setting up a network?
e) What are the different cyber security threats, and how do you defend against them?
Section 4 – Ethical, Legal and Environmental Impact
a) What is meant by ethical issues in computing?
b) What is meant by legal issues in computing?
c) What is meant by environmental issues in computing?
d) Give an example of a Computing issue that has ethical, legal and environmental impacts:

For each of the main theory topics students need to know, a concise but in-depth explanation is given - but missing key information. Students must use the word bank provided to fill in the gaps and complete a full explanation of each topic. The idea would be that students then rewrite the explanation in their own words to ensure they understand it, but this is obviously optional and may not be right for your group.

In designing this task, I wanted to be able to provide my students with high quality explanations, but with enough interaction and challenge to make sure students’ brains are engaged as they complete it. The filling in the blanks nature of the work means that all students can access the material, and the extension to rewrite using the bold terms enables a way to stretch even the most able of students. I think this is particularly useful as a last minute task as it will hopefully not cause cognitive overload in the same way that doing exam style questions or equivalent would in last minute revision slots.

I will be using these as revision for my GCSE cohort in the sessions before their exam, but could also be used longer term or as homework tasks. It could also separated by section and used during first teaching or many other ways.