Introduction

We now offer OCR AS Computing to our KS4 pupils as an alternative to the GCSE ICT course. Pupils will study this course over two years; it is normally done in one year by 16-17 year olds but given the excellent students we have here, I think they will cope. Just under 50% of the pupils opted to do this course when they had to make their choices at the end of Year 9. There is no coursework in the OCR AS computing course (which ironically means we will be able to do more practical work as we won't have to jump through hoops).

The pupils are all girls in a high-performing grammar school. They have all had some experience writing code in previous years; they have used Scratch to write a shoot-em game, VB.net to produce a web browser, Logicator for flow charts and html to produce web sites. Pupils on this Computing course will have three 50 minute lessons a week in both year 10 and 11; one lesson is intended to be a pure theory lesson and they will also have a double lesson lasting 1 hour 40 minutes in a computer suite. I expect them to do about an hour or so a week of homework. Pupils will primarily be learning Java. The main IDE we will be using is Greenfoot (excellent and free). We will be working from the Michael Kolling Greenfoot textbook and using resources from the Greenfoot website. We may dabble with other languages and IDEs.

The broad plan for the first year is to program program program by teaching pupils how to write computer games. I intend covering as much of the Greenfoot textbook as possible and as much of the Programming unit (OCR Syllabus F452) in year 1, and then the theory parts (F451) in year 2. By the end of the first year, I want the pupils to be able to confidently write their own computer games.

Saturday 24 September 2011

Week 3 - Errors and layout

This week was another excellent week. Most students are pretty much at the end of Chapter 3 in their textbook, so they have started to use class methods and the IF construct and have been introduced to the documentation side of Greenfoot.

A common theme this week has been getting pupils to spend more time making sure their code has been indented properly, laying it out using spacing and adding comments, as well as using meaningful names for methods. Another point that needed some work was to ensure pupils started taking more note of the error messages they got when compiling their programs and making sure that they noted these and how they dealt with them for the future.

To help reinforce both the above points, I put together a few worksheets (see the Greenfoot downloads section at www.theteacher.info) and we spent some time talking about these issues, looking at some examples and doing some exercises. It will be interesting to see who takes this on board in the next few weeks and who still needs more encouragement.

Both classes are starting to look like real programmers! As a reward, I bought a tin of chocolates for them and they munched their way through them in the computer labs as they worked on their crab games.

I found a nice competition that I want to get them to enter and have asked them to have a look at the web page for it for homework. I explained to them that it is a bit too earlier at the moment to think about writing code but to take note of the competion and start thinking about ideas. I reckon come November or December, this competition might make a good project for them.

I've also started setting up contact lists for the two groups and am working on a Moodle course for them. One thing I am hoping to do pretty soon is to start regular monthly tests, but I really want them done and marked automatically in Moodle and/or Hot Potatoes to keep the workload under control. I'm also keen to do monthly questionnaires with them in Moodle, to get feedback about how they feel they are doing and to start a Moodle Wiki soon, to help develop course notes.

The only other thing on the horizon is the Sixth Form open evening. We didn't get anywhere near enough Sixth Formers opting to take Computing A Level last year so the course didn't run in the Sixth Form, the first time for 10 years. I think we (as well as lots of other schools, judging by the national drop in numbers) put off most students in KS4, where the GCSE ICT coursework has had a lot to answer for (and the new GCSE ICT courses with their pretty awful controlled assessments are just as bad - but that is a whole different blog!!)

The plan is to emphasise the games writing parts of the course to Sixth Formers and to showcase some of the work the new KS4 Computing students have already done. Hopefully, I'll also have an XBox Kinect set-up by then. I want to get some of the pupils programming the Kinect as soon as I get my budget approved and can buy some. Then hopefully, they can showcase what they have done in some assemblies.

Sneaky huh?
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