ICT

Subject Area Curriculum Intent

Section 1: Principles at Key Stage 3

The core principle underpinning our KS3 curriculum is for our students to be active and engaged users and creators in the emerging digital economy. Our KS3 curriculum is designed to allow students to have access to both Computer Science and Information Technologies and make informed choices on how they pursue the subjects as they continue their learning journey through KS4 and beyond. Digital Literacy and programming skills will increasingly be an integral part of future professions. The curriculum content at KS3 is both knowledge and skill focused. By the end of Year 7 and Year 8 students will;

Have sufficient knowledge to stay safe on line understanding the types and potential threats of Malware and how potential issues from these programmes can be avoided.

Develop knowledge, skills and understanding through key computational concepts. Design and develop computer programmes (Block) which make use of loops, variables and if statements. Be able to test their programmes through problem solving and analytical thinking.

Design and develop simple models which reflect real life situations. Identify different data types, use formulae and simple functions to create their models and understand and test changes to the data.

Develop knowledge and understanding of the physical components of a computer, the role/purpose of the components and how computers work. Understand why computers use binary code and be able to convert denary numbers to binary and the reverse. Understand why programmers use Hexadecimal and be able to convert the code to binary and denary. Identify Logic Gates and be able to complete truth tables. Develop simple algorithms to solve real life situations.

Both knowledge and skill acquisition covered above will be demonstrated and assessed through Microsoft Teams assignments and Class notebook. Students upload their live projects which will then be assessed against the assessment criteria. This platform also allows for individual dialogue with each student.

Year 9 Creatives

Students have the option to choose ICT/Computer Science in Year 9. The programme of study has been amended for 2021/2022 to allow for closing gaps (particularly Practical skills) in learning due to the pandemic, and to incorporate specification changes for Cambridge Nationals Information Technologies which are due to commence September 2022 (First Teaching). Year 9 Students who opt for ICT/Computer Science will study the following units;

• Introduction to Python Programming
• Python Programming Next Steps
• Database Development
• Spreadsheet Modelling
• Augmented Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Computer Networks

The units that students study have been sequenced taking into account prior knowledge and experience of Computer Science delivery and KS1 and KS2. The initial units covered will allow students to develop their practical/software skills and understand how to best use computers as a tool to further enhance their learning in ICT/Computer Science and other subjects that they study. Subsequent units will build on their initial experience technical understanding. All course content for delivery at KS3 has been meticulously mapped to back from course specifications at KS4, Computer Science GCSE OCR J277 and Cambridge Nationals Information Technologies J808.

Section 2: Connectedness (linking and co-ordinating)

All aspects of the KS3 curriculum taught will need to be retained for KS4, depending on the pathway chosen by individual students. In delivering the curriculum content a range of skills and applications are used to give students the opportunity to experience and develop their practical skills alongside knowledge acquisition and prepare them for progression to either ICT or Computer Science at KS4.

Computer Science GCSE

Students take Component 01 and Component 02 to be awarded the OCR GCSE (9–1) in Computer Science. There is also a requirement to complete a 20 timetabled hours programming project for submission (not assessed)

COMPONENT 01

1.1 Systems architecture: Students will study;

• The purpose of the CPU
• Von Neumann architecture:
• Common CPU components and their function:
• The function of the CPU as fetch and execute instructions stored in memory
• How common characteristics of CPUs affect their performance:
• Embedded systems

1.2 Memory: Students will study;

• The difference between RAM and ROM
• The purpose of ROM  and RAMin a computer system
• The need for virtual memory
• Flash memory

1.3 Storage: Students will study

• The need for secondary storage
• Data capacity and calculation of data capacity requirements
• Common types of storage:
• Suitable storage devices and storage media for a given application, and the advantages and
• Disadvantages of these, using characteristics

1.4 Wired and wireless networks: Students will study;

• Types of networks: LAN (Local Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network)
• Factors that affect the performance of networks
• The different roles of computers in a client-server and a peer-to-peer network
• The hardware needed to connect stand-alone computers into a Local Area Network:
• The internet as a worldwide collection of computer networks:
• The concept of virtual networks

1.5 Network topologies, protocols and layers: Students will study;

• Star and mesh network topologies
• Wifi & Ethernet
• The uses of IP addressing, MAC addressing, and protocols including:
• The concept of layers
• Packet switching

1.6 System security: Students will study;

• Forms of attack
• Threats posed to networks:
• Identifying and preventing vulnerabilities

1.7 Systems software: Students will study;

• The purpose and functionality of systems software
• Operating systems

1.8 Ethical, legal, cultural and environmental concerns: Students will study;

• How to investigate and discuss Computer Science technologies while considering how key stakeholders are affected by technologies, environmental impact of Computer Science, cultural implications of Computer Science
• Open source vs proprietary software
• Legislation relevant to Computer Science

COMPONENT 02

2.1 Algorithms: Students will study;

• Computational thinking:
• Standard searching algorithms:
• Standard sorting algorithms:
• How to produce algorithms using:
• Interpret, correct or complete algorithms

2.2 Programming techniques: Students will study;

• The use of variables, constants, operators, inputs, outputs and assignments
• The use of the three basic programming constructs used to control the flow of a program:
• The use of basic string manipulation
• The use of basic file handling operations:
• The use of records to store data
• The use of SQL to search for data
• The use of arrays (or equivalent) when solving problems, including both one and two dimensional arrays
• How to use sub programs (functions and procedures) to produce structured code
• The use of data types: common arithmetic and Boolean operators

2.3 Producing robust programs: Students will study;

• Defensive design considerations:
• Maintainability:
• The purpose of testing and types of testing

2.4 Computational logic: Students will study;

• Why data is represented in computer systems in binary form
• Simple logic diagrams using the operations AND, OR and NOT
• Truth tables: Combining Boolean operators using AND, OR and NOT to two levels
• Applying logical operators in appropriate truth tables to solve problems
• Applying computing-related mathematics

2.5 Translators and facilities of languages: Students will study;

• Characteristics and purpose of different levels of programming language, including low level languages
• The purpose of translators
• The characteristics of an assembler, a compiler and an interpreter
• Common tools and facilities available in an integrated development environment (IDE)

2.6 Data representation: Students will study;

• Units: bit, nibble, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte
• How data needs to be converted into a binary format to be processed by a computer.
• Numbers: how to convert positive denary whole numbers (0–255) into 8 bit binary numbers and vice versa
• Numbers: how to add two 8 bit binary integers and explain overflow errors which may occur
• Binary shifts: How to convert positive denary whole numbers (0–255) into 2 digit hexadecimal numbers and vice versa
• How to convert from binary to hexadecimal equivalents and vice versa
• Check digits.
• Characters: the use of binary codes to represent characters; the term ‘character-set’
• The relationship between the number of bits per character in a character set and the number of characters which can be represented (for example ASCII, extended ASCII and Unicode).
• Images: how an image is represented as a series of pixels represented in binary; metadata included in the file
• The effect of colour depth and resolution on the size of an image file.
• Sound: how sound can be sampled and stored in digital form
• How sampling intervals and other factors affect the size of a sound file and the quality of its playback
• Need for compression and types of compression