This activity helps children learn about computer systems and output devices. It relates these systems to those they encounter everyday, from headphones to printers and washing machine motors. They understand that programs make these devices function, and attempt a programming activity using Scratch and Lego WeDo....

This lengthier activity involves designing and creating a simple computer game using the free Microsoft Kodu platform. It is expected that the children will have some prior experience of Kodu, or that a basic tutorial is offered before commencing this activity. Worksheets are provided that help children through the...

This book produced by the team behind the Magpi magazine and the Raspberry Pi contains a series of projects suitable for students of all ages. It consists of 13 chapters which start off by introducing students to Scratch on the Raspberry Pi, it then builds up the complexity of the tasks chapter on chapter. A brief...

This resource provides a lesson plan and all the related materials to teach children about the principles of building and programming robots. It relates the components of a robot to the equivalents in humans for example relating human senses to the robots sensors, muscles to motors and brain to computer and program...

This edition of the Computing at School (CAS) newsletter is focused on physical computing, and features:

*The BBC Micro-Bit and Make It Digital projects

*CPD tips with Barefoot and Quickstart

*Primary school activities with Scratch and Makey Makey

*Scratch projects with Microsoft Kinect...

In this multi-lesson project pupils design and code a computer game. It uses a rainforest theme but can be adapted to any topic, with learners of varying age or ability.

The project includes:

• Decomposition of the elements of a game
• Designing the game
• Creating assets for the...

This guide for students allows them to explore technology used in space through the Arduino tool. They can build circuits to blink an LED and to measure temperature, pressure and altitude. The basics of programming in C++ will be introduced using the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) software. This...

Developed by the National Centre for Computing Education, these question banks can be used with key stage 3 computing and GCSE computer science students.

The question banks linked below focus on programming.

How to use these question banks?

Two sets of question...

This Challenge Pack, from the British Science Association, aims to give students aged 11-16 and their teachers and educators support to create a science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) project that they can enter into the National Science + Engineering Competition.

Through creating a project, young...

The resource includes Scratch blocks which can be printed and laminated to allow children to create block algorithms visually and in a hands-on way. A great resource to introduce the idea of Scratch blocks to Key Stage One students in the hope that they will become familiar with the system when they reach Key Stage...

Two different sets of printable Scratch blocks that could be used for display or for unplugged programming in upper key stage 1 classrooms as an introduction to programming.

Alec Jackson is the author of the Scratch block cutouts resource.

James Holmes, Gary Setchell, Keith Madderson and Cobie van de...

A booklet containing lots of generic programming theory. The topics include:

• What is a program?
• High level languages and machine code
• Design methodologies
...

This article from the CS4FN Magazine, looks into the ideas surrounding Intellectual Property, copyright, copyleft and patents and how these all apply (or don't) in the realm of computer programming and software. These ideas can be used as...

This booklet consists of 16 introductory programming challenges, some of the challenges also provide further extension challenges, for every challenge there is a "Self Review" section which asks students to comment on whether they managed to complete the task successfully, whether they had any errors initially and...

This resource consists of an information sheet detailing various methods for validating user input in Python, these come in the form of a table consisting of some code in one column and an overview of what the corresponding code does. There is an associated zip file with code examples in it and a presentation which...