About

Hello there!
Here, I will create and publish Computer Science teaching materials that are up-to-date and constantly updated, that are referenced to UK and the US national curriculum, including different topics at different stages. These will be easy to find, searching by the level / year / key stage and the topic, but also easy to teach from no matter the teaching platform the school uses. They will be grouped and published as coherent units to deliver whole over a number of lessons, as well as suitably sequenced and you will always find a lesson that follows naturally from another lesson here.
The materials will include the following.

Teaching materials

These will be accessible to subscribing members only.
These lessons will have been delivered by me and tested in the real-world classroom environment.
These include a lesson outline and an accompanying presentation, as well as subject knowledge links and resources for the teacher to learn more about the topic so she can deliver it confidently.
There may be videos and video demonstrations to ensure the clarity of explanations as well as . These may be narrated by an AI but always written and scripted by me: I do not believe that AI can create good teaching materials or scripts — it certainly hasn’t delivered in my experience.
A plenary for each lesson will include a quiz designed to evaluate new knowledge and identify any gaps in learning after the lesson.
including core and extension work to stretch and challenge the more able,

Student workbooks

These will be accessible to subscribing members only.
Teaching assistant materials necessary to assist students at the Foundation level will be provided and accessible via any brower (iPad, a mobile device, laptop or PC), as well as provided as a printable version.
They will always include an activity at the start of the lesson, which students will carry out independently, as soon as they enter the classroom. This will give you the teacher the opportunity to take the register as well as attend to any immediate or urgent matters, e.g. a student missing or a teaching assistant who needs a short explanation of what’s coming up.
Any links to the videos and / or video demonstrations will always be included for students to refer to, as well as a link to the textbook (see below).
There will be 4 levels of tasks:
  1. Foundation
    Even a student completely new to the topic should be able to complete these. Students with special needs or learning disabilities should be able to complete these with some or minimal assistance. An average student who was present in class for the learning will complete these with ease and in a short time, and should be expected to move on to the next tasks.
  1. Core
    These lesson tasks are core topic learning and should be completed by all students unless they find learning especially challenging or have a special learning need or disability. If a regular student does not achieve these in the lesson, you may choose to issue a consequence for lack of engagement (unless there was a valid reason, e.g. the student had an appointment to attend and left the lesson early). If not completed in the lesson, these tasks are always homework (unless a student is expected to work at the foundation level).
  1. Advanced
    These tasks facilitate a deeper engagement with the topic and embedding of wider context, which allows the students to have the understanding that empowers them throughout life and is useful in most learning and professional contexts. The more able students may complete these in the lesson, and any student who has completed the Foundation and Core tasks should be expected to engage with these tasks.
  1. Adept
    The highest level of task for the topic, suitable for students who particularly enjoy Computer Science or look to develop their skills in wide contexts and substantially beyond what’s required by the curriculum.
This allows you the teacher to measure effort put in learning and reflect this in unit grades. E.g. if an able student completes only Foundation tasks, he is not truly learning and mostly coasts. He might be distracted in lesson, or engaged with unrelated activities. A scenario such as this is a reason to be concerned as a teacher and bring this up with the student’s parents, and the student should be encouraged to work at a higher level. If such a student achieves Core or Advanced in the unit test, there should be no doubt that he would have achieved higher had he engaged with the material more deeply.

Student textbook

There will be a student learning / textbook page to go with every lesson. Here, students will find all the learning for the lesson should they need to go through it independently (e.g. if they weren’t in the lesson or are taken out of the lesson). This will be useful for students in need of recalling lesson learning when doing homework, or just to refer to should they have forgotten what was taught or simply ensure they are on the right track.
There will be further reading and research for your Advanced and Adept students.

Homework

As a teacher with only four free lessons a week, I am painfully aware of the amount of homework that remains unmarked. For this reason, I favour automatically marked quizzes as homework at the lower years, and at higher grades, where there is an expectation (and the need!) that students spend time at home studying, homework will be included with the accompanying student workbook.
The reason for doing this is dual: you only have one sheet to mark for the lesson and there’s much less switching between platforms and documents when marking, but also students are put in charge of their learning, allowing them agency over their workflow: they can do the basic lesson task and the homework in class and nothing at home, or attempt an extension task at home. But of course, it is ultimately up to you, the teacher, to decide whether to issue it at the time of lesson or as a separate task, insisting students must do some work at home and giving them feedback on it.
However, in some countries, where teacher workload is lighter (and in some it is much, much lighter), marking homework is not an issue, and you may issue homework as a separate assignment.
Today, students are overloaded with homework, especially at high-performing schools. Teaching at such a school, my focus is on the GCSE students, and the learning at lower years (grades 7-9 or KS3 in the UK) should bear much less pressure. In my experience, students who are interested in computing will do work at home — especially when this work is truly stimulating. Life is busy and varied, and sticking to a class work → homework rut will not always work for every student. Even the most motivated may not always engage with home learning — and at the age of AI, we ultimately can’t force them — but if they have the time and desire and the level of work is right and sufficiently challenging, they will engage, and they will be interested, and thus self-driven and challenged, they will take pride in their work.
Like lesson worksheet, the homework will include 4 levels of tasks: foundation, core, advanced, and adept.

End of unit assessment

After a series of lessons, there will be an assessment. It will assess students at 4 levels and can be delivered as an online quiz / questionnaire to be marked online or as a printed written paper.

Why?

I am an experienced, qualified teacher, and I love teaching and Computer Science. I have accumulated lots of materials and, with minor updates and enhancements, they will be useful to and usable by everyone.
I aim to blend the UK and US Computer Science curriculums to make for for a more rounded education, interested learner, and competitive professional. Our UK A-Levels in Computer Science leave students with a wealth of theoretical knowledge but very little practical application, with exception of coding, which is encouraged and developed, but Computer Science is not just about coding — coding is only a part of it. Teaching Computer Science should not be different in the UK from what it is in the US. If a topic is recommended for secondary school delivery in the US and is excluded from the national curriculum in the UK, the UK students are missing out. I often find that some topics, delivered in isolation, aren’t easily understood by students. Delivering an additional lesson to make learning relevant by adding another topic or context should not be out of question: it should be encouraged for teachers and for schools. Wider knowledge makes not only for stronger computer scientists but also for more of them, as a student who understand is a student who is engaged, and potentially one who becomes interested, even despite the lack of initial interest.
The quality and relevance of current textbooks is inconsistent. They are outdated as soon as they are published.
Currently available materials schools can buy are of questionable quality at best. They are extremely disappointing to teach from. They are not thought through and often don’t gel well as a series of lessons, next entirely not following the last. They have clearly not been written by real teachers and not tested or delivered in real-world classrooms. They are extremely outdated — as soon as they published / sold, and very rarely, if ever, updated.
Develop myself professionally
Subscriber teachers will be able to comment on the materials and point out anything that went well — we can be a community of educators each with an opportunity to be part of these evolving materials
Share knowledge
Deliver and improve materials based on real classroom experience: mine and yours
Textbooks are outdated and expensive to purchase
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