In our Year 7 this year, they all have a very different set of software skills and experiences. There are some pupils who were at Fyling Hall Junior School and some pupils who attended different primary schools in the Whitby and Scarborough areas. Consequently, so we use their first term in the senior school to consolidate and learn some of the basics that they are going to need in other subjects. They have created informational /persuasive brochures for an animal charity using Publisher and investigated what makes a good (and bad) presentation before designing and creating their own. Each pupil did a fantastic job confidently delivering their presentation to the class. It is important pupils have experience in speaking in front of other people, how to use speaker notes effectively and how to design an interesting looking show.

More recently we have been looking at coding using the Rapid Router game on the codeforlife.education website created by the food delivery company Ocado. This starts off in a simple way so pupils gain confidence using basic code to help the truck deliver food to customers. It builds up the skills gradually, introducing IF-ELSE functions and REPEAT UNTIL loops which are important in learning how to code. Pupils gain points for the quality of their code and getting to their destination without crashing. The next steps will be moving onto coding with Python in year 8 and also learning how to create websites using HTML code.

Wendy Banks, Head of ICT