Year 8 pupils will be doing aspects of Functional ICT, Digital Literacy and Computational Thinking throughout the year

Year 8 students will be learning some of the key ideas that shape how we interact with computers and their impact on a local and global scale.  The first unit looks at the interesting field of Cryptology and the use of cipher, to encrypt and decrypt sensitive information. The Technology unit covers hardware and software and looks at uses of the ‘cloud’ and the social issues arising from the Digital Divide. The Number systems unit teaches students to convert between binary, denary and hexadecimal.  It also covers that computers can represent numbers, images and sound as binary.  The Artificial Intelligence unit teaches the origins and uses of AI and some of the social impacts it is likely to have. The final unit, Networks covers the structure and function of local area networks and larger wide area networks, including the hardware and protocols used.

• Be able to work both independently and collaboratively
• Develop the confidence to ask for help and answer questions in the classroom
• Be able to tinker and strategically discover solutions to problems
• Inspire students’ curiosity to learn more about the technological world around them
• Persevere with more challenging work
• Apply techniques learned in previous years and other subjects

• Practical lessons
• Thinking for themselves using reason and logic
• Paired work and group work
• Individual teacher interactions
• Teacher instruction / exposition
• Learner discussions

• Checks for understanding (CFU), including Do Now Activities (DNA), use of Mini Whiteboards (MWB), low-stakes quizzes
• Formative assessments
• Homework
• Deep marking opportunities through the year
• Knowledge assessments

• Speak to them about what they have been doing in their lessons
• Discuss changes in technology and the impact on society
• Support them to develop healthy habits with the use of technology
• We ensure that the majority, if not all, of the software we use is freely available to students. If there is the capacity to make it available

• Pen, pencil, rubber, ruler, calculator

• A wide variety of enrichment resources and materials: https://ulverstonvictoria.sharepoint.com/sites/ComputingIdeas
• Bebras computational thinking competition in November (in class and at lunch)
• Coding Challenge in March (at lunch)