Business
Computing
YEAR 12 ENTERPRISE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The Year 12 students held a sweet sale across two lunchtimes in June to raise money for Rett UK a charity supported by the school which raises awareness and supports families of children who suffer from this severe lifelong neurological disorder. The students have taken part in a number of team activities over the past two months and their sale of beautifully packaged sweets raised £80.68 for the charity.
From September this group of students will be demonstrating their entrepreneurial skills again by running their own businesses until January. These will range from selling mocktails, running pottery craft classes, and giving maths tuition to selling specially designed t shirts, earphone holders and offering fun sessions with your dog! So look out for information about all these on our return
to school! By Mrs L Watterston - Head of Department
DEPARTMENT NEWS
This academic year has seen the full transition from ICT to Computing. As the GCSE and A-Level courses have more focus on programming, this has also become the main focus in KS3 so that our students are thoroughly prepared for these new courses.
The real challenge this year has been through assessment. There has never been assessment levels for Computing as the change of curriculum came into force as levels were being abolished. Therefore we have had to do a lot of work with external bodies including other schools to
ensure that we are assessing correctly.
Key Stage 3 In year 7, students are taught the basics of logic and problem solving. They use flow charts to create simple programs. They have also done a lot of work using Build your own blocks (BYOB).
that students have gained in Primary School using similar software called Scratch.
Key Stage 4
Year 10 students have been working through the new GCSE Computing course.
This extends the knowledge However, we use BYOB in a
different way to Primary schools in that we use it to teach core programming concepts that will help students in text-based programming in year 9.
This week, Year 7 students have received their free BBC micro:bit devices in their computing lessons. This is part of a national project to help foster and inspire a lifelong interest in computer science. The BBC micro:bit is a very simple computer. It is programmed by using another device (smartphone, tablet, PC, iPad etc.) to write the program, which is then compiled and downloaded onto the BBC micro:bit. The department is also a running a summer competition with prizes for the most creative use of a micro:bit device. All of the details are in the student pack.
Year 8 has a real focus on text-based programming. Students have used HTML to code a website and then used the Python programming language to create their own programs.
Year 9 have also had a focus on programming as we look to ensure that potential option students are well prepared for their GCSE course.
This new course looks more
at the technical side of computing such as hardware and computer architecture. There is of course a large amount of programming involved too using the Python language.
The final cohort of BTEC ICT has just finished (year 11) and the external standards verifier has released our results meaning that overall, the pass rate and student progress to target has massively improved from last year.
Option numbers have continued to grow. The year 11 BTEC ICT course had 23 students.
The current year 10
GCSE Computing course has 45 students and the new GCSE Computer Science course for September has 60 students. This is a subject area that is certainly on the up!
Key Stage 5
Our year 12 students are the final cohort to start the Applied ICT course and they have made outstanding progress this year, especially in the coursework units. Subject to moderation, the coursework units saw the majority of grades at A-C for a group of students with target grades of C-E.
As mentioned, this is the final
cohort of Applied ICT under the A-Level reforms, so from September 2016, we will be offering a 2 year A-Level course in Computer Science.
By Mr N King - Head of Department
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