Mar 23 2016

Year 5 Nested Repeat Loops and Functions

Using the Hour of Code site, the children explored nested ‘repetition’ and ‘functions’ whilst creating shapes and patterns. They then wrote their own programs to draw patterns.

Mar 23 2016

Year 2/3 Unit 3D Inputs and Outputs

Year 2/3 have been exploring input and output devices. They then have looked inside the computers to see what else a computer needs to work like, a fan, power supply, motherboard, RAM, the processor. Using Scratch the children programmed the input of the arrows on the keyboard to make an Etch a Sketch style game. They explored how different keys could be used to input different colours and width of pens for an output

Mar 22 2016

Year 4 Unit 4D Sorting Networks

In computer science we were investigating how computers sort information and learnt how they bubble sort information. We learnt that computers can only compare two sets of information at one time and the smaller piece of information goes to the left and the bigger piece of information goes to the right.

In the hall, the children were given 6 numbers and had to sort themselves using this method into ascending order. They started at one end of the hall in a random order and (hopefully) by the opposite end of the hall they had sorted themselves into order. The groups tried to do this as quickly as they could.

Mar 9 2016

Y4 Unit 4D Sorting Algorithms

Year 4 children have been investigating the ways computers could sort data using different algorithms. Some algorithms didn’t work and others did work but took many comparisons. We ended the lesson with looking at a video of dancers acting out a Bubble Sort Algorithm.

Mar 7 2016

Y4 Unit 4D Sorting Algorithms

Sorting Algorithms

Year 4 have been looking at the difference between Bubble and Quick sorting algorithms. They know that computers can only compare and sort two items at a time. Computers sort files into lists very quickly according to size, name, file type etc. We explored how computers do this using film canisters with different amounts of weight. The children used scales to explore how computers would sort these canisters from random weights to a list of the lightest to the heaviest.