Computer Science

A key area in Year 7 is for students to understand and develop computer programs using both block and text coding that reflect computational thinking and become fully aware of staying safe online and cyberbullying.

COURSE CONTENT

● Students will study the Input-Process-Output sequence and the Fetch-Decode-Execute cycle through practical activities. ● They will look at some simple binary to decimal conversion and vice versa, and learn how text characters are represented using the ASCII code. This will be followed by some simple binary addition. ● Students will learn more in depth how storage devices represent data using binary patterns and physically save these patterns. ● Students will cover some of the legal safeguards regarding computer use, including overviews of the Computer Misuse Act, Data Protection Act and Copyright Law and their implications for computer use. Phishing scams and other email frauds, hacking, “data harvesting” and identity theft are discussed together with ways of protecting online identity and privacy. ● Students will be introduced to a Python programming environment and begin solving various tasks using block based commands. They will then start to plan and develop their own algorithms, learning to incorporate variables and use their computational thinking skills to make decisions and introduce iteration at appropriate times. ● Program robots and learn to debug their code.

SKILLS DEVELOPED

● Computational thinking ● Problem solving ● Troubleshooting ● Knowledge and understanding of computers

ADDITIONAL EQUIPMENT NEEDED

Students will be expected to bring a set of headphones to all Computer Science lessons.

ASSESSMENTS

Students will be assessed every half term based on the work covered up to that point. There will also be an end of year assessment, where students will be assessed on the topics covered throughout the year. This will consist of both a practical and written paper.