Scientists at the University of Oxford are developing and improving computer programs that can learn. Often it is useful to feed computer programs a series of images and to get the computer to identify or sort them in some way, but how do computers create or store...

Aimed at early years and lower primary this resource supports the learning of basic programming. It contains a printable pirate themed programmable robot mat on a grid. Children can program a Bee Bot to visit several sites on the pirate island and reach a treasure chest. It is designed to be printed in several A4...

This Barefoot Computing activity challenges lower-primary children to debug simple Scratch programs that assemble pizzas on-screen. A simple four-step process for systematic debugging is demonstrated.

Using logical...

This set of five lessons introduces pupils to data modelling using spreadsheets through the theme of a class pizza party. Pupils will develop their computational thinking skills of abstraction, decomposition, algorithms and evaluation and combine different types of software to present their work. These sessions...

The growth of plants in space is a keen area of experimentation, including ongoing work aboard the International Space Station. Successful crops will help astronauts to spend longer in space, boosting their healthy diet while reducing the mass of prepared food that must be transported from Earth.

Using a...

This resource contains four instant maths ideas exploring how to represent data graphically. In the first task students record how long they watch TV, group the results and draw two separate graphs to compare boys and girls. The second task requires students to consider what type of diagram is suitable to represent...

Robots are really useful in space as they can do lots of different jobs, some of which are too difficult or dangerous for humans. This activity looks at the different uses of robots in space exploration, with children...

The Principia Space Diary aims to help children find out more about the Principia mission, to strengthen literacy and digital literacy skills and engage children in STEM learning....

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...

This five hour teaching pack examines how everyday technologies can be connected via the Internet Of Things (IoT) to improve fire safety. 

From the sensors...

These three resources, from the National Strategies, focus on solving problems.

Logic problems and puzzles...

The first video is about defensive design considerations.  Data is not always entered in ways that a program might expect.  If this can be easily rectified without asking the user to re-input the data, it is known as input sanitation.  In addition, to prevent invalid data crashing a program, validation techniques...

This activity introduces students to space and planetary science whilst teaching skills that engineers and scientists use to analyse data from other planets. Students are given a detailed introduction to the programme ‘Python’ through the resources and are taught about the needed set up, spectral algebra and...

This activity can be used to introduce pupils to, or consolidate understanding of computing programming. Pupils will learn how programming is used on Mars and to understand the importance of this before using the programme ‘Python’ to complete their own computer code. This activity as part of the ‘Roving with...