Our curriculum fits in with our intention of being ambitious, with the challenging topics and high-level programming skills taught and the range of topical skills developed over the key stages.  It promotes students to be hard-working independent learners by teaching them how to decompose problems and by having the highest expectations of them in class and studying at home.  Students are taught to be resilient, working with a computational approach to problem-solving using the department's mantra. Students will be taught about how they need to take responsibility for their actions both locally and globally as active and safe online citizens.

 

Students in Year 7 are initially taught how to stay safe online and how to organise themselves at St Catherine’s College in order for them to be safe and efficient users of our online, cloud-based curriculum and IT facilities. E-safety will feature as a first unit in Years 7-9, enabling them to develop their digital safety skills. They will also engage in the creation of Scratch games, exploring key concepts such as variables, sequences, selection and iteration as groundwork for using BBC microbits in project 3. They will explore exciting challenges within this unit which uses Python, our first text-based language of choice.  Our curriculum has recently been developed in Year 7 to introduce students to the concept of computer control and cybersecurity.

Python and coding skills remain the focus of Year 8. Students create an e-safety quiz (in Python) and explore the world of computer control using a flowchart and pseudocode approach to solving input, process and output challenges within Flowol. This is a dedicated piece of software bought to support these skills in topical scenarios. They then use html, our 2nd text-based language, to create a website. This introduces them to the concept of creating a digital product for purpose and audience, which is revisited in Y9.

Year 9 has 5 units to build on Y7 & Y8 experiences and to give as broad a taste as possible of the options at KS4.

Within Unit 1, students create a digital product which presents to a chosen audience about how to stay safe online. Unit 2 revisits and explores the world of computer control, using flowcharts and pseudocode to solve problems, allowing them to see that it is internationally acceptable to code in flowcharts, pseudocode or a high-level language. Unit 3 centres around students building on their html, web-based skills in order to create a touch screen interactive product for a big event, skills vital for the DiT; purpose and audience a strong focus. Unit 4 Explores the hardware of “My Phone” and is an engaging, topical and relevant way to explore and deliver hardware and data representation in a fun way.  Unit 5 focusses on extending and developing Python skills ready for KS4 Computer Science. Unit 6 is a digital product which teaches students how to use excel in order to track the sales of seats for our drama production; again, essential skills for the DiT, delivered within the context of a real-life event. 

Full details of our curriculum for all years can be found below. If you have any queries, please contact Mr S Wilson, Head of Computer Science via swilson@stcatherines.college