This activity, one in a series, uses traffic lights and control of vehicles to explore if-else, if, and wait commands, and to learn about variables.

A set of onscreen programming challenges are supported with teacher guides, worksheets, model solutions, assessment activities, wall displays and overview...

This lesson utilises challenges created by children during lesson 9 of the Blockly 'Rapid Router' course. While attempting to follow a programming challenge written by someone else, debugging skills and logical thinking are encouraged. Children are also required to use loops and other constructs independently....

In the third lesson of the course, children use direct 'remote control' of the Rapid router van to gain experience before starting to program their own sequences of commands. They also start to debug simple sequences.

The resource contains assessment records, wall displays, and activity solutions.

In this Rapid Router activity, children progress from block-based programming to the textual environment of Python. In doing so they learn about the nature of text-based coding, including the need for precise syntax and how it is structured.

The progression is handled gently, with code compared in both...

This Blockly lesson from the Rapid Router course examines selection using IF statements. Nesting IF statements within loops is also studied, and a video explains the importance of selection in programs.

An 'unplugged' activity reinforces understanding before the children code their solutions in Rapid Router...

This activity explores the concepts of pattern recognition and problem decomposition. It illustrates these ideas using a popular children's book, "We're going on a bear hunt" by Michael Rosen.

Children are asked to apply their understanding by then creating functions using the Blockly editor on the Rapid...

The second lesson using Blockly in upper primary within the Rapid router game-like environment. This activity introduces conditional repeat statements that loop until a condition is met. Videos are included that explain to children why conditionals are useful. Also included are worksheets, assessment forms, model...

This four-lesson sequence teaches students to create multimedia for a given purpose. Using digital cameras and special desktop publishing software, students create a comic-book representation of the life of William Shakespeare. They are required to plan and execute the project from the beginning and to evaluate...

One of the units from the Nuffield Primary Solutions in Design and Technology in which students produce a multimedia presentation using software they are familiar with from previous ICT lesson time. The presentation content must first be researched and the presentation itself needs to be attractive and easy to use...

This is one of a series of resources to support the use of the BBC micro:bit.

In this activity pupils will make use of the BBC micro:bit to design and create a programmable system that can control the temperature and soil moisture levels in a ‘smart’ greenhouse. They will analyse a design brief and design...

This activity introduces children to simulations - modelling or acting out real-world, or maybe imaginary, situations. Linking to the teaching of space, it asks what factors need to be considered when simulating the solar system. Out of these, the children then decide what the most important things to include in...

Scratch is widely used in primary schools to teach children basic programming. This resource goes deeper, making use of the familiar Scratch environment to take students deeper into programming concepts such as:

• Algorithm design
• Parallel and sequential instructions
• Event-driven...

To play a simple game called Hexapawn, an ‘artificially intelligent’ computer is created made entirely from sweets. The game is like a mini version of chess; the rules are explained fully, and a playing board drawn. The ‘machine’ then ‘learns’ how to improve its playing of the game by trial and error and by ‘...

Using analogies to teach the topic of the TCP/IP networking is often a very useful strategy. This Computing at School community resource consist of three documents. The first provides a theory overview of the communication process. The second provides a range of links and activities, although some are aimed at...