This series of three lesson activities uses Scratch to create animations that tell a story, and can link to studies in English.

A starter Scratch file partially tells the story of the Great Fire of London. Additional resources are provided allowing children to improve the animation.

Using some short...

A useful handbook for setting up a student-led STEM club, with exemplars from three schools.

It is increasingly recognised that giving students opportunities to act as ambassadors and mentors for STEM subjects outside of school can be of great benefit to the individual, their institution, and to the broader...

In this video from Osiris Educational Bill Rodgers discusses his...

Students who refuse to follow instructions are among the most...

The aim of this survey was to analyse the elements of successful nurture group provision and the difference that nurture groups make to the outcomes for students. Nurture groups are small, structured teaching groups for students showing signs of behavioural, social or emotional difficulties, particularly those who...

Using a set of simple ‘swap puzzles’, this CS4FN activity helps students to learn, fundamentally, what an algorithm is and how they can be made more efficient. Students are encouraged to create algorithms for solving the puzzles which can be used by future players to win, with no understanding of the game, in as...

The Computing at School newsletter is published three times a year. It is full of practical ideas for teachers of computing in primary and secondary schools, with articles contributed by a number of CAS members. With input from teachers, academics, advisors and industry professionals, it provides a varied source of...

This infographic gives a clear overview and summary of the progression of the Teach Computing Curriculum through each key stage and year group from the beginning of key stage 1 through to the end of key stage 4 with suggestions for post-16 options.

The Teach Computing Curriculum resources contain everything...

This CS4FN activity from the team at Queen Mary University of London highlights some issues encountered during the design of human-computer interfaces (HCI). It acts as an introduction to HCI, introducing the need to translate problems and to understand how people behave.

The activities include a robot...

The aim of this activity is to raise awareness of human interface design issues. In a world where poor design is rife, people have become accustomed to dealing with problems caused by the artifacts with which they interact, sometimes blaming themselves instead of attributing the problems to flawed design. The issue...

By creating their own paper ‘robot face’, students learn about how high-level language is translated into low-level machine instructions. The resource, created by Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan of the CS4FN team, covers sequencing in programs, compilers and interpreters. A detailed instruction sheet guides the...

The number of children aged seven and under who are excluded from primary schools is very small and comprises a tiny proportion of children of this age from a very small proportion of schools. Nevertheless, some children of this age group are receiving fixed-period exclusions, occasionally leading to permanent...

This magic trick from the Computer Science for Fun team at QMUL shows that computing is about more than just programming and computational thinking is about more than just algorithms.

A simple mathematical approach is taken with dealt piles of cards – this allows the dealer to control the whereabouts of the...

This unplugged activity from the CS4FN team uses two examples – an insulting computer and one that can play snap – to look at simple computer programming, flow of control and logic. Everything is provided for this front-of-class activity, which would act as an effective starter for a lesson on programming concepts...