It has been a couple of weeks since the pupils have regained their rightful place in the classroom. In Junior School, the Years 3 and 4 have been hard at work settling well into new routines within a short amount of time.

Year 3

This is their first foray into Junior School and on top of getting used to a new environment, they have also had to adapt to the use of a different type of technology: the portable computer. The first lessons with the Year 3 classes have been aimed at creating and reinforcing good computer-use habits. After successfully learning how to properly collect and return the computers to their allocated place in the trolley, we went over how to sign in and out of the school network; learning about the importance of keeping passwords secret and safe. We moved on to the use of Google Chrome and its Omnibox, before spending some time breaking down the parts of a website and its main code: HTML. The pupils were happy to discover how a webpage is made and how complex it is behind the scenes.

Year 4

After going through a refresher course on Computer Science expectations, pupils moved on to the creation of a Scratch project spanning multiple lessons. They went over concepts such as using code to change a sprite’s costume or to make sprites react to input and how to add sound to a sprite. All in an effort to create a musical piece which reacts depending on user input. Creativity serves as the leading theme in lessons, where each student expresses their ideas via the use of different costumes, colours, sounds and motions. Each class has been attributed anonymised Scratch user accounts which are part of private Classrooms, so that each project is shared within the specific class.

The teacher circulates around the class during the lesson, having given instructions at the beginning, made them available on the VLE and reminding them to the group at regular intervals. Some pupils have been very helpful in supporting their classmates with the collection and return of their computers and headphones.