Teachers' Page
Coding Club Curriculum Map
Students can obtain good coverage of the Computer Science aspects in the KS3 National Curriculum in a project based, differentiated course; where the learning of programming is carefully planned and much of the required Computer Science content is covered incidentally by following either all three Level 1 books or Python Basics and Python: Next Steps. This would leave plenty of time to cover the missing statements, 5, 7, 8 and 9 in the usual way as these have been traditionally taught in KS3 ICT courses.
Level 2 and 3 books provide comprehensive foundations for the programming components in GCSE Computer Science.
Click the image below to see the PDF curriculum map:
Python Basics Resources
Python Basics is part of the Coding Club Python series and is intended to develop into a reading scheme type resource. As this is the first book in the series, teachers may be faced with a class full of students who have never met programming before. If you are in this situation you may prefer to class teach and guide the students through the book yourself. To aid this process, the author (independent of and unedited by CUP – i.e. it's not their fault!) has developed some fully editable resources just for teachers, which you are free to download and use as the basis of your own lessons.
Lesson plans and Powerpoints (11.5MB): PB_LessonResources.zip
Source Code (5KB): PythonBasics-SourceCode.zip
Answers (5KB): PythonBasics-Answers.zip
To aid with target setting, AfL and monitoring of students progress a fully editable pupil progress sheet is available. The idea is that a double sided A4 card is produced for each student. At the beginning of the lesson/club the students collect their cards and fill them in during the lesson. On the front teachers can monitor progress and cries for help. On the back teachers can negotiate which consolidation tasks are attempted on an individual basis with the students. The author has greyed out all those that are felt to be more than the bare minimum.
Pupil Progress sheet: PB-DoubleSidedProgressChart.pdf NEW
Python: Programming Art Resources
Python: Programming Art is the first Level 1 Resource book. This provides teachers with a number of options. Students can use this book as both extension material (those that finish Python Basics fast will find their knowledge and skills extended in some exciting areas without anything being more difficult and, as consolidation for those who are not confident to go up a level or as support by combining it with Python Basics like this:
Students who are not confident enough to go on to the Etch-A-Sketch™ section in Python Basics can instead start Python: Programming Art. When they get to the Art App section in this book they can revert back to the less complicated Etch-A-Sketch™ section in Python Basics.
Finally of course there is just studying Python: Programming Art as a project book for those that are interested in the Art side of things in a lunchtime club for example while working on Python Basics in lessons.
Source Code (5KB): PythonProgrammingArt-SourceCode.zip
Answers (5KB): PythonProgrammingArt-Answers.zip
To aid with target setting, AfL and monitoring of students progress a fully editable pupil progress sheet is available:
Pupil Progress sheet: PPA-DoubleSidedProgressChart.pdf NEW
Python: Next Steps Resources
Python: Next Steps is the first level 2 book. Here the students are more likely to want to work independently than in Python Basics. They will be introduced to a bit of Computer Science such as refactoring and binary numbers while learning about GUI design and the new data types tuples, lists and dictionaries.
Source Code (5KB): PythonNextSteps-SourceCode.zip
Answers (5KB): PythonNextSteps-Answers.zip
To aid with target setting, AfL and monitoring of students progress a fully editable pupil progress sheet is available:
Pupil Progress sheet: PNS-DoubleSidedProgressChart.pdf NEW
Python: Building Big Apps Resources
Python: Building Big Apps is the first level 3 book. Here the students are definitely going to want to work independently. They will be introduced to a bit of Computer Science such as flow diagrams, re-usable code and project designand while being introduced to classes and objects as an introduction to object-oriented programming.
Source Code (5KB): PythonBuildingBigApps-SourceCode.zip
Answers (5KB): PythonBuildingBigApps-Answers.zip
To aid with target setting, AfL and monitoring of students progress a fully editable pupil progress sheet is available:
Pupil Progress sheet: PBBA-DoubleSidedProgressChart.pdf NEW
The author's Occasional Articles:
A student based Computing curriculum – June 2017
Jobs for humans! – September 2015
Have we got it all horribly wrong? – February 2013
Coding For All? – December 2012
(Feedback and suggestions for improvement are very welcome.)