VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
View from the classroom
There are around 22 children in each form who enjoy specialist teaching across 16 subjects including Mandarin, design and philosophy as well as the core curriculum subjects. I’m Head of Computing at the school & also teach Design Technology (DT). I have a state school education background myself (attending a secondary school in East London) and taught in state schools for 11 years before moving to my current role. The other two days a week I work for a consultancy company called 3BM education.
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This month, in a piece written at the beginning of lockdown, Nicolas Hughes,
Head of Computing at a London school, talks about his experiences of using the BBC micro:bit in the classroom and trialling the micro:bit classroom tool in both a class and remote learning setting. As well as his teaching role, Nic is also a Primary CAS Master Teacher, CAS Hub leader, a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, a Pi-Top Champion, a Google Certified Educator and works part- time as an educational consultant for 3BM.
Tell us about your school I work three days a week at an independent school called Latymer Prep School in Hammersmith, which is a co-educational, selective school teaching pupils aged 7 to 11 (Year 3 to 6). We’re a two-form entry school
with an intake of 170 pupils primarily from Europe and Asian as well as English backgrounds.
What do you consider your school's strengths to be We try to inspire our children with a love of independent learning and life. We prefer to set project-based work, and guide and nurture them academically. We also build mindfulness into the school day. This seems to work well as our children appear resilient, with a good approach to learning that matches our high expectations. Most children play an instrument and we’re
part of a charitable foundation that encourages the children to fundraise. Our 400th anniversary is in 2024, so by then we want a quarter of the prep and upper school combined to have bursaries, to encourage an intake of pupils from less well advantaged backgrounds. We see digital technology is an essential part of
everyday life and ensure our lessons are interactive and motivating. We’re fortunate that our school is very well resourced for digital technologies.
How do you help students develop their computing skills? My approach to teaching computing is to broadly follow the National Curriculum, bringing together the three key strands of computer science, digital literacy - including online safety - and information technology. Children need to be
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www.education-today.co.uk October 2020
taught core skills across all three areas: for example, they need to be taught how to use a computer confidently, before they can move on and creatively utilise digital technology to make things like infographics, presentations and 3D models. When I’m teaching computer science, I try to
blend onscreen lessons with unplugged activities. We guide our children to use their computational thinking by getting involved in exciting and imaginative programming projects using physical computing devices like the BBC micro:bit. With my Year 4s, for example, we’ll use Scratch (a block-based software) to teach them about sequence and repetition through creating an animation - and then use physical computing to introduce the concept of inputs and outputs.
When were you first introduced to the BBC micro:bit? I’d known about BBC micro:bits for some time before their initial launch in 2016.
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