The curriculum is designed to help students develop skills that allow them to think like a computer programmer. The course starts with some of the basic elements of programming and IT functions and gradually provides more challenging activities until in Year 9 students have developed skills that will allow them to produce programmes to solve more complex problems. The aim is also to develop an ability to use other features of IT such as graphics design.
Flowcharts
Students begin their learning by investigating algorithms and they design a flow chart to create an algorithm using flow chart symbols.
Modelling
In Year 7 students learn about the features of spreadsheets and are able to use the different functions of spreadsheets to create models to solve problems. In Year 8 students learn about the concept of computational thinking and build on prior learning of spreadsheets to develop more complex models to solve more difficult and challenging problems.
Programming
In Year 7 students are introduced to HTML and Python programming languages. They learn how to use HTML to design their own website, edit it and add images. They learn some of the basic features of Python and create their own code to get Python to perform some simple tasks. In Year 8 they revisit Python to learn about more complex code to solve more challenging problems. Students will complete a project to design their own code to perform particular tasks such as operate a police speed gun. In Year 9 student make use of more complex code to develop their programming skills and complete a final project that allows them to showcase these skills.
Cybersecurity
This important topic is introduced to Year 8 students to emphasise the importance of security when using IT. Students learn about issues around cybersecurity and good practice, e-safety, threats and security.
Understanding computers
Students examine the hardware function of a computer. They learn how the different parts of the computer work including the use of software and binary language used by computers.
Graphic user interfaces
Students are introduced to the idea of Graphical user interfaces and use skills developed when designing websites and developing flow charts to be able to design a user interface for a mobile phone.
