Enquiry-based KS3 Computing Schemes of Work

Broad overview of KS3 SoW used at my school, now in its second year.

Created by Matthew Walker
last edited Oct 17 2012 by John Maguire

This is an overview of our current KS3 (years 7-9) schemes of work. Following a school-wide initiative the topics are ‘enquiry-based’, meaning broadly that students tackle a question over a number of weeks until they feel able to answer it. This is a bit of a mish-mash of agile teaching, project-based learning, insert current buzzword of choice, although it has been great fun to teach and students have responded well to it (12 year old kids understanding recursion by using BYOB to generate fractals was a particular highlight for me!).

We try not to teach Computer Science, Digital Literacy and IT as discrete subjects (partly because 50 minutes a week isn’t enough time) so questions like “Why is Facebook successful?” and “How does Google work?” are intended to cover foundational areas of CS as well as societal issues.

I’ve tied it in with the level descriptors I’ve posted elsewhere on this forum and it also includes a mapping of this SoW to the CAS curriculum, the NaaCE curriculum and the old ICT PoS.

PDF and Word files attached are identical. All comments greatly received.