A series of activities designed to stretch and challenge A Level Computer Science students.
These activities include articles, TED Talks, YouTube clips, Documentaries and Podcasts, all of which will facilitate wider knowledge and understanding of the key topic areas of the syllabus.
Activities come with a Cornell Note Taking template
A set of 7 PowerPoint presentations which take students through the “model” exam answers to a series of questions relating to the topic of Architecture, Memory and Storage.
A unit of work which introduces students to the concept of e-commerce, including the hardware and software that is required to do so. They they design an e-commerce site for a business
By the time most students are in Year 7 they are extremely familiar with using computers for entertainment, research and school work. However, very few will have given the computer itself much thought. It is unlikely that they will know the origins of the first electronic computer or how computers have developed over the decades. Although they might have heard of the term, ‘transistor’, very few will know their role or how their development has been predicted by Moores’ Law. Even less will know about how computers process data and switch between tasks whilst working. And whilst they are familiar with the term, ‘software’, do they really know what it means?
This scheme of work aims to provide a gentle introduction for students to the world of computers and computing
A revision booklet supporting OCR J276 Computer Science Revision for specification point 1.3 Storage:
the need for secondary storage
data capacity and calculation of data capacity requirements
common types of storage:
optical
*magnetic
*solid state
suitable storage devices and storage media for a given application, and the advantages and
disadvantages of these, using characteristics:
*capacity
*speed
*portability
*durability
*reliability
*cost.
A revision booklet supporting OCR J276 Computer Science Revision for specification point 1.2 Memory
• the difference between RAM and ROM
• the purpose of ROM in a computer system
• the purpose of RAM in a computer system
• the need for virtual memory
• flash memory.
A revision booklet supporting OCR J276 Computer Science Revision for specification point 1.1 Systems Architecture
the purpose of the CPU
Von Neumann architecture:
MAR (Memory Address Register)
*MDR (Memory Data Register)
*Program Counter
*Accumulator
common CPU components and their function:
*ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit)
*CU (Control Unit)
*Cache
the function of the CPU as fetch and execute instructions stored in memory
how common characteristics of CPUs affect their performance:
*clock speed
*cache size
*number of cores
embedded systems:
*purpose of embedded systems
*examples of embedded systems.
In the run up to completing the Programming Project (NEA) for OCR GCSE Computer Science, it is sometimes difficult to track and monitor progress. Students often don’t take suitable notes or keep detailed comments on their previous code to serve as an aide memoire in future programming. This learning diary facilitates student reflection and evaluation of their learning within a lesson and allows progress to be tracked across a series of lessons. It could also be used to support tracking the progress of students within NEA lessons, perhaps as part of a homework.
A presentation to talk students through how to answer questions in GCSE Computer Science to get the best marks. The presentation talks through exam command words and how to interpret how much should be written based on the number of marks available and shows some exemplar answers.
A mat to give tips and hints on writing an extended answer question in GCSE Computer Science - useful for explaining how to get the top marks in a 6 mark question