Computing

The children have enjoyed getting used to using computers during their time in Year One. We started by talking about how to stay safe on the computer, what to do if we felt worried and we thought about who our trusted adults were at home and in school. For information about this to use at home, you could visit the NSPCC website.

Next, we learnt the basics - how to turn the laptops on and off safely and correctly. We have talked about passwords, opening programs and shutting down the computers before plugging them back in.

Our first few computing lessons focused on coding. This has become a big part of what would have been ICT at school. The children are learning the foundations of how to create an 'algorithm' (or set of instructions) so that a program will act a certain way. It starts simply and this is what we have been working on in class - deciding what you want to happen, creating an algorithm and 'debugging' (or fixing) it if it doesn't do what you wanted it to do.

Eventually, as children move through schools and become more confident they will move on to being able to code simple games or apps. Pretty cool really!

Next, the children went on to using Microsoft programs. First, we used Word and got to grips with basic typing skills (what do you do if you press the wrong letter?! What if you don't want the words there?!) Once we felt a bit more confident using the mouse and the keyboard, we had a challenge! The children put information about our favourite pets into a bar chart using Microsoft Excel. This took a lot of focus and we really had to check our typing and control where we were clicking.

Helpers weren't allowed to use their hands to guide thier friends. Only computing language!

I was pretty impressed with this effort from the class! Have a fab weekend.