Teach Computing Podcast Ep11 - Secondary Teach Computing Curriculum.mp3

Teach Computing Podcast Ep11 - Secondary Teach Computing Curriculum.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Teach Computing Podcast Ep11 - Secondary Teach Computing Curriculum.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

James Robinson:
Hello and welcome to Episode 11 of the Teach Computing podcast, the show focuses on teaching and learning in the computing classroom. This month sees the launch of the teach computing curriculum, so we thought it was a good opportunity to sit down and talk to the authors of the curriculum and some of the teachers using the materials. We've recorded two versions of this episode, one focusing on the secondary content and one focused on the teaching materials for primary teachers. This episode is aimed at secondary teachers. If that's not the episode you want, return to the podcast feed, where you'll find another episode 11. Later, we'll hear from some teachers who are using the teaching materials in their classroom already. We'll also hear from some of the authors behind the content. But first, I started by talking to Carrie Anne Philbin from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, who's been leading this work over the past 18 months. So Carrie Anne. We we spoke a little while ago about the curricular materials that have been generated by by Raspberry Pi. I thought it'd be a good opportunity to sit down with you again and just find out a bit more about the project where we've got to and so on. So how how are you, Carrie Anne?

Carrie Anne Philbin:
Well, we are reaching the most exciting phase of the project in that we have almost written, we're so close this week, we have almost written the entire Teach Computing Curriculum, that's five hundred lessons. And I was thinking the other day, what does five hundred lessons actually look like? It's always really hard to talk to people what that looks like in terms of documents. And so I did a quick tally and we've worked out there's roughly around three thousand files in our curriculum. Three thousand files is roughly around 40 files per unit, and there are sixty nine units in total. I mean, it's just a crazy, crazy amount of work and such a huge achievement on behalf of all of the teachers who have contributed to this amazing body of work.

James Robinson:
That is a phenomenal achievement. And I'm thinking back to my early teaching days when everything was on my shelf in ring binders. How many ring binders would you say this is going to fill?

Carrie Anne Philbin:
Well, I'm too worried about the trees to count the ring binders. Luckily, this all lives online, so...

James Robinson:
It's a significant amount of content out there. It's I don't think it's, it's fair to say that this is the first time that something like this, on this scale, with this amount of rigour and support built into it, has been kind of attempted. Really?

Carrie Anne Philbin:
Yeah. I mean, since the introduction of the computing curriculum in 2014, I'd say this is the first time there's been such a complete comprehensive collection of materials going from key stage one all the way through key stage four. And I think that is what is really exciting about it. It's progression all the way through. It means secondary were able to look at what the primary team we're doing a primary were able to look at what the secondary team were doing and really make sure that the that they were providing the building blocks to secondary and the secondary were picking up the baton from primary to continue the great work.And that's that's just phenomenal.

James Robinson:
It is, the amount of work that's gone in behind the scenes. And we're going to speak to some of the individual team members through this episode. While I've got you here talking. What's the if you look back on the last 18 months, what has been something that you guys have been particularly proud of or something that you think is a real achievement as part of this work?

Carrie Anne Philbin:
Well, I think first and foremost, that we're able to actually meet the scary deadline that was looming you know, not very long ago if someone had said to you, you need to create an entire curriculum of that many documents in in 18 months. You think, blimey, there's no way I could do that. So I think just that we were able to achieve that is something I'm immensely proud of. It's not really my achievement. I'm speaking on behalf of a group of people who have achieved this. And it's through their expertise, their enthusiasm, their commitment to the project that we're able to be at this point. I mean, I have a lot more grey hairs than when I started, and that's nothing to do with my age. I swear. It is purely this project.

James Robinson:
We'll make sure we include Carrie Anne's age in the show notes for those that aren't. And I don't know the question that I was going to ask. And so there'll be there'll be a bunch of teachers that are listening to this podcast. Now, what is it that you hope those teachers can take away from this this piece of work that we've achieved? What do you hope it does for them?

Carrie Anne Philbin:
My hope is that it lightens their workload. I think for some teachers who have been teaching computing for a long time, they will be fully skilled. They would have taken the computer science accelerator course and passed with flying colours. And I have no doubt that they already have amazing computing lessons. Maybe for that group, it's just to show some of them the new emerging pedagogies that we have based this on. Maybe that might be a new insight for them and their teaching. So maybe they'll be able to pull that out from the materials. Maybe it's someone who is completely new to computing and just wants to see what's out there and what's available to help them get started that's there. I think if you're a primary teacher and you've had a lot of training around programming and you feel quite comfortable around programming, what else should you be teaching as part of the curriculum in primary? And I think we do a really great job of providing lessons around creating media at primary and data and information at primary. So I think those are the key things for me.

James Robinson:
And I guess as well, you know, we're providing kind of a model kind of curriculum here. So if anyone in the secondary who maybe hasn't engaged with their primary colleagues, there's a chance here to go and look at what could or should be being learnt at primary and vice versa. If it's a chance to sort of look across those phases and have this model set of materials that you can refer to. Well, thank you very much. Is anything else that you'd like to add in there Carrie Anne?

Carrie Anne Philbin:
I just want to thank every single person who's contributed to to this collection of material, very specific people that are in my team is Allen, Rebecca, Ben, George, who contributed most of the secondary material. In primary there's famous Ben, Andy, Sway and Josh, who've done a majority of the primary. And then we have some set of contractors who have helped us from the CAS community, from our National Centre community, from Subject Matter Experts. There's so many to go into detail around. But, you know, their support has been phenomenal. And some people within the Raspberry Pi Foundation, you, James, have contributed in lots of ways around pedagogy. You know, thinking about how we can best represent this from our digital team who have helped us launch this new website that helps teachers navigate this content. For people who have read through the copy to check that we've spelt things right. Just everybody who has contributed to this. It's it's thanks to that collective effort that we have such a body of work available for teachers. And I'm really, really excited about it.

James Robinson:
Thank you so much, Carrie Anne. I think it's going to be really exciting to see how people engage with this over the next over the next academic year and start to use this in the real world.

Carrie Anne Philbin:
And give us feedback. Give us feedback.

James Robinson:
Absolutely. I mean, as much as you can celebrate the fact that we're done, we're not done, right? Because any feedback we get, we're going to improve and we're going to iterate and we're going to learn from how these are being used in the classroom. And this is going to be hopefully a body of work that's going to continue long into the future. Cool, well, thank you very much for your time. I'm now going to go and have a conversation with some of those colleagues you mentioned, the second team, and find out a bit about what the secondary curriculum looks like. So I'm joined now by Allen, Ben and Rebecca from the secondary content team at the Raspberry Pi Foundation who Carrie Anne mentioned in her introduction, who've been working extremely hard on the content over the last 18 months. Allen, for the secondary teachers listening. Do you want to just give us a quick overview of of the offer that we are presenting to secondary teachers around computing?

Allen Heard:
Yeah, so starting from Key Stage three all the way through to key stage four, you've got a kind of fully resourced, well explained bunch of lesson plans that cover a whole range of topics, not just the programming concepts, but things like data science and cybersecurity as well. I think the key stage three ones form a really nice basis from the year six things work that they would have done previously and then when they get to the key stage four, then they've got those real GCSE topics thoroughly resourced just so they can hopefully do well in their GCSE qualifications. I think the fact that they're so well resourced and so well explained will be a massive benefit to teachers who will be looking for stuff for some time, you know.

James Robinson:
Mm hmm. And that's a really important point you pull out there about the fact that it is computing. It's that sort of whole subject is not just the computer science aspects or bits of the subjects that new teachers might struggle with, particularly. It is a really holistic offering. And you guys have been working on this for for a long time now. What what would you say has been the biggest challenge? And I'll open that to anyone that wants to answer, Allen, Rebecca, Ben?

Allen Heard:
I think I mean, for me, the biggest challenge has been obviously the time scale that the team had to do this in. And it's you know, it was a it was a challenge to start with looking at the deadline. But then when you throw in a something like a pandemic into the mix as well, it throws in an element of uncertainty. So I think, you know, looking at that kind of uncertain few months that the deadline was, that was the bit that was kind of quite difficult to to think about.

James Robinson:
And I guess balancing that with, you know, we know we knew when we set out to do this that we wanted to be producing something which was high quality. And so balancing that time pressure against maintaining quality is a real challenge. And Rebecca, you know, how about you? You've been working on this for, you know, for a long time now. And and you have one of the longest units that we've produced. I think is that you've got the record for the longest unit.

Rebecca Franks:
Yeah. So it took me six months to write a 50 lesson programming unit. So it was a bit of a roller coaster trying to get through all and thinking about quality, the deadline. And and also well same for everything for all the units really, we're under such an immense amount of scrutiny from not just our own team, but also the academic board as well. And then obviously, when we publish this and then it goes out to the public and it's just making sure that it's the best it can possibly be and that you produced it in the in the time frame that it needs to be. And, you know, I'm really proud of it. And it has been a team effort. Obviously, I've written it, but it's it's been a lot of team effort with feedback and, you know, showing them a bit of code and saying, is this the right way to do it and is this the best way and how would you do it? And making sure that every step of the way we've got that scrutiny and we're really making sure that it's the best it possibly can be. So, yeah, definitely the record it was definitely a long, long, long piece of work, but I'm very proud of it.

Ben Garside:
Yeah, I think what's been a challenge has been working out the differences between how our experiences as a classroom teacher with students in front of us and sitting by ourselves or as a team working out what would work in the classroom for multiple settings.You know, we've got to make sure our resources are appropriate for all different types of settings as best we can. So I think user experience, I think in this lesson should take about 50 minutes. It might take an hour, whereas knowing that another school with a different set of learners in front of them, it might take a little bit longer, it might take a little bit shorter. So making sure that the units are flexible enough to allow the teacher to be able to use them in that way, which in a way that suits the students in front of them.

James Robinson:
And yeah, and that's a real challenge. You know, we are the team is very small. You know, for all the work you've been doing, your second team of three currently you were four. And and, you know, we've got lots of other people writing content, but we've had to rely a lot on on feedback and sort of support from a wider group of people to make sure that we are making these lessons as approachable, as broad an offering as possible. And what are the things that you're most proud of as a team and as individuals yourself.

Rebecca Franks:
I suppose my programming unit is the thing I'm most proud of, but also know the team and how well we've worked together because we were all strangers 18 months ago. And, you know, the fact that we all came together, it was like a piece of a puzzle because we all had our own skills that we could bring to the team and when we when we fit together. We seemed to work so well. I've never worked in a team where we all bring our own qualities and it really just there's like a magic to it. I'm getting a little bit emotional there, but yeah, it was just crazy how we all just sort of fit together and and work together really well. So I guess I was proud of the team also, you know, in terms of my work. I'm proud of my programming unit too.

James Robinson:
And is there anything particular about your programming unit that gives you that sense of pride? What makes it sort of stand out for you?

Rebecca Franks:
I guess it's something because I used to be a teacher, a computer science teacher working full time. And there's just absolutely no way I'd, I would have ever been able to do something this detailed with so many resources, so many programming challenges for the learners to have a go at and think so carefully and clearly about the order of how to teach things properly and how to really stretch them, but also scaffold them along the way. There's just no way that I would ever have had time to do this as a full time teacher to really ever get six months to sit and plan it every single day, a unit of work. So I think the fact that I was able to just put that much effort into it and knowing that, you know, hopefully this is going to be something that can be really useful for teachers out there, even if it's just that they go in and go. They've got already got some good ideas and they just want a magpie a few like activities and things like that. And, you know, just helping those experienced teachers out as well with giving them some new ideas, but also helping out those less experienced teachers and just giving them the whole plan can just work through. So, yeah, it's it's been a lot of work, but. Yeah, proud of it.

James Robinson:
Great. And Ben, what's been a sort of a highlight for you?

Ben Garside:
Well, I think in terms of us talking more about the whole project quite broadly, I'd say that one thing I'm particularly proud of is the fact that although as referenced by other people, we've had some quite tight deadlines. At no point have we ever thought we had the mentality of that'll do. The quality has never been sacrificed by the tight deadline, and I'm really proud about that. No one thought, you know, let's just put it out the door because we've got a tight deadline, we're making all of us within us have got to make sure that we feel proud of the resources that we've done to make sure they're good quality. I think if I was talking about in terms of an individual unit that I was involved with, I would say that I'm particularly proud of the year seven programming units that Rebecca and I wrote. I think they were the ones that laid the foundation, the groundwork to any kind of future programming units that we wrote. So our key stage 3 / 4. But I remember that I remember particularly Rebecca and I sitting in a room in the Raspberry Pi headquarters for probably an afternoon, it felt like a day when we were staring at a learning graph.And but, you know, we spent so long looking at it to make sure we got it right. And I remember Carrie Anne popping in occasionally to see what we were doing and why we were spending so long in the room.But she also came in and threw in her ideas. And that's I think that sums up what a collaborative process that unit was. I mean, it wasn't just our team, but it's also we had to deal with colleagues across the NCCE consortium where we discussed transition between key stage two and three, how that would look, what existing knowledge we expect the learners to have when they came to us in year seven, what we'd like them to leave year seven with.So I think the unit itself, the resources that you see on the teach computing curriculum, are very much like the end product for a lot of hard work. And I suppose I don't mean that just in terms of graft, but in terms of the thinking and drawing up on different people's expertise, the research and pedagogy that's out there. So I kind of feel like we got that unit right and that's why I feel proud of it. Obviously, we'll only know if we get it right. We've got feedback from people. So again, we would really love to get feedback about it. But yeah, that's definitely the unit that I think makes me feel really proud of the work that we've done.

James Robinson:
Excellent. And it's amazing how much sort of work went in the early stages of this development process. I remember some of those very early conversations about our approach to differentiation or inclusion and all those kind of different things. So I'm going to ask all three of you a slightly different question, which is if you were now back in the classroom and you were preparing for teaching in September, which unit would you be most excited about teaching in the next academic year?

Ben Garside:
Well, what I'll think about this question I was I thought far too much about it, but because we've given so much attention to each one of our units, I feel like this question is asking me to pick between my children, but saying that I am I'm going to do that...

James Robinson:
It is, it is Ben, asking you to pick between your children?

Ben Garside:
Well, my data science child is the one I'm going to pick. I think that's probably the one I enjoyed writing the most, the year nine data science units. I think primarily it's a it's just a really interesting topic. I enjoyed doing my research for it. And hopefully that's going to be translated as something that's engaging for the students as well. I also think there's nothing really out there at the moment that explores the concepts being covered in that unit, which is which I got quite excited about. But it also explores some different pathways. Maybe the computer science can take it out. It's not just a programming thing. It might have open up opportunities for young people where they think I could do a career in that that might be a job that can I can use my computer science skills for. And obviously, data science isn't just like the remit of computer science either it is something that relates to other subjects that they're studying as well, such as geography. We actually wrote that unit in collaboration with Edinburgh University, who are running a project called Data Education in Schools, and that's a UK and Scottish government funded project to teach data literacy and data citizenship skills to learners between three and 18 in the Edinburgh and surrounding areas. So again, it's the fact that, again, it's not just us, it's collaboration with the experts out there in the country. So we built this, this unit not just between ourselves, but we've drawn upon the expertise of the real industry leaders I suppose.

James Robinson:
That sounds really exciting. I'd love to teach that unit if I was back in the classroom. And Allen, what are you really proud of and which unit would you want to be teaching next year?

Allen Heard:
Yeah, I mean, the code, the fifty lesson Python one is an absolutely belting unit. But I mean, aside from that one, because it's had enough kudos already and it is a superb. Personally, I really I remember reading reviewing the cyber security unit in the data science units. And I think because of those you see you see those kind of topics in exam papers as an ex-computer science teacher when you're looking for resources or quality resources that don't just gloss over the topics and give the learners something meaningful. I think the amount of research that the Ben did to put into those units to write then was was phenomenal. And I really enjoyed you know reading through those and wishing that if I was to be teaching again, they would be ones that I would really, really like to to be involved with, proud of what we're proud of. Well, I joined this team later than Ben and Rebecca. But Rebecca said we none of us knew each other really 18 months ago just to echo what Rebecca said there, really it's really nice to work in a team that care so much about what they do. I don't think I've ever worked with a team that, you know, scrutinise each other so much, you know, so sometimes painfully painful scrutiny of each other, but with the one sole goal of making these resources the very best they can be and making sure they're absolutely technically correct as well. Because obviously, you know, we want the learners and the teachers to be having the best experience possible. But the team effort that's gone in, I've seen so many of these documents and read through so many of them to review them and the amount of thought process that's gone into them and hard work is is incredible. So, yeah, I'm really proud of the team for that.

James Robinson:
James Robinson: Excellent. And Rebecca, I was just going to come to you to find out which unit you'd be teaching. I mean, I kind of know already, I suspect...

Rebecca Franks:
I think my favourite units were the ones George did at the beginning, which is on data representation, for key stage three, I remember reading those and being like, wow, I would absolutely love to teach these because just all the history that has gone into in the background and just the way that he's taught it and it's just such an inventive new like different approach as well, which you don't. Well, I've never seen it before, so I was just I'd absolutely love to try teaching those. It was yeah, we've got a Micro:bit unit in year nine and that is just going to be so fun to teach. It is really, really good. So I'd love to do that one too.

James Robinson:
Super. I mean it's so, I mean I ask you for one. They've given me three, that's fine, that's cool. But...

Rebecca Franks:
Sorry I always I over deliver!

James Robinson:
Overachiever Rebecca, overachiever! No, no that that's, that's fantastic. Thank you. So yeah. I mean it's been, it's been a real pleasure talking to the three of you and hearing a bit more about your work and the team. And it's clear the amount of pride and effort and energy that's gone into this piece of work. And, you know, I know we're not quite past July yet, but I hope that each and every one of you get at least. You know, an hour's break before you start your next big thing, you know, I think, you know, take a moment to reflect on on what we've achieved over the past 18 months, because it really is phenomenal. So thank you very much for your time. And we're going to hear from some teachers and hopefully they're going to echo echo your thoughts.

James Robinson:
First, I spoke to Dave Cross, a subject lead at an Inner-City Academy teaching computing at key stage three and four.

Dave Cross:
So initially we looked through the resources, we could see that they are quite off the shelf and readily available. So we've only looked at common teaching and learning tasks, so including the likes of do now tasks and retrieval practice and consolidation and maybe some extra lessons at the end of the unit to allow for misconceptions. But what we're going to do is as soon as we get to know the context and the feeling of our classroom, we'll just change and tweak the individual resources and activities for for their context, I think, because the variety of activity so struggling against other subjects in the school only have one hour per week and making sure that we've got ample opportunity to engage with the students, I think because the content quite off the shelf and readily available. But it's not like a strict diet. So there's ample room for change and content within the units itself and individual lessons. And being able to adapt it to the context of the students I think was quite beneficial that someone else has done all of the workload already. They're obviously going to be, well used. So it's good that we can just take them and adapt them for our own purposes and run with it almost straightaway.

James Robinson:
Next, we travel to York to hear from Pete Dring a Head of computing at a mixed 11 to 18 comprehensive in the city, there.

Pete Dring:
The NCCE units were a big lifesaver for us during lockdown. We relied a lot on the cyber security units. We trialled those with year sevens and year eights and the feedback was great from teachers and parents and students. So we want to build on that. This year. It's all change for us in key stage three. So we were moving from the current two year key stage three to in September. We're moving to three key stage three. So we're having to to reorganise and rewrite all of the units. And because of the quality of the units that are out there from the NCCE it's an ideal time to just embrace them, run with all of them and adapt them as we go.

Pete Dring:
The starting point for us is always about the learning objectives and then that comes back to the endpoint with assessment. So I really liked how the lesson plans and the learning graphs were all mapped out so you could see the journey. Assessment and differentiation is the hardest nut to crack, I think at key stage three computing and we'll we'll need to adapt the resources for different learning, different learning abilities. But I liked the way that there was definite progression in the learning graphs and you can see how all of the activities map through to the learning objectives. I think it's demanding and I think there's a huge amount of content. It's going to be a challenge to to see how it all fits into the number of lessons that are available, especially with additional pressures this year. For rooming, not all key stage three lessons are going to be in computer rooms, but the resources are easy enough to adapt to work in an unplugged setting. So we just think it'll work really nicely. There's a couple of skills that we have wanted to build on in our old key stage three, some skills that other departments have said, you know, why aren't you teaching this anymore? So we wanted to make sure that the three strands of digital literacy and I.T. and computer science were given equal weighting and the students got a fully rounded, useful set of skills to move them forward.

James Robinson:
Next, I spoke to Heather Beecham, Head of computing, for a mixed comprehensive secondary school in Salford, where they offer computing at key stage three and key stage four, as well as creative iMedia.

Heather Beecham:
So for me, the NCCE content really appealed because the intent of it was so clear cut. As soon as I started looking at it, it was really clear that it was backwards planned from GCSE computer science, which was a really, really important thing for me, because with us being at that point where we were launching GCSE computer science, I really wanted a robust key stage three that was going to give us that outstanding achievement in years to come as our key stage three students move up through the year groups. And from looking through the resources, I could see that I was able to be confident that students were actually going to be able to get what they needed from it. Also key for me was the sign posted CPD that helped us to address any small knowledge gaps that we had in advance through the computer science accelerator course and through the online CPD that was being offered during, particularly during lockdown, where it was really easy for us to access it. And the resources themselves are some of the best I've seen. I've been teaching for sixteen years and they're so comprehensive, the plans, the PowerPoint, the worksheets, the homework, the assessments, the learning graphs, mapping the objectives throughout the unit, everything's there for me and it's free as well, which is incredible.

Heather Beecham:
Topping that with Carol's work to support us along the transition just made it a really, really easy choice. It's the first time in quite a long time that I felt really, really supported to to develop my curriculum. And I just think really that anyone that's thinking about should I should I contact the NCCE, should I get involved? Should I see if I'm entitled to any support? I can't recommend it enough. You know, it's really been like a breath of fresh air this year to have the support from Carol, which has been invaluable. I can't praise her enough and to have to have the access to this content. And it really, really made a huge difference to to the way. But we're going to be working moving forward. So I cannot recommend it enough really for people to just have a look at it, get involved, take the time, because it is really worth the time.

James Robinson:
And finally, let's hear from Hena Shah. A curriculum progress leader from a large secondary school in Halifax who's using the Teach Computing Curriculum to reintroduce key Stage three computing at her school.

Hena Shah:
So I've had a very thorough look at all the the materials provided and because it was a blank canvas. And really we were being quite selective as to which units we want to cover and what skill set we want to cover. So I kind of followed the national curriculum and had a look at all the different start strands. And what was important to me was the students were getting a flavour of not just the computer science part, but a bit of I.T. a bit of the digital literacy. So we've ensured over the three year model that they could bring all those different strands and also meet the national curriculum, Strand's levels, not levels anymore, but obviously meeting each one of them. So I think it was quite easy to follow and teach computing the way the units were set out, what they were offering, what skill set and sorry national curriculum levels they were covering. So we basically took it off the shelf. And I think we've used we're using all the units suggested on the on the website. I think the order is what I've had to take into consideration. What do we want to start off with first here in term one and what do we want them to progress onto during the academic year? And what do we want to focus in year seven and eight and then nine. What I have done for the year nine units is we have actually taken some key stage four. So, years, I think it's year 10 erm units and we put that in the latter part of the academic year. Just so students get a flavour of what's to come possibly in their key stage four.

James Robinson:
So there we have it, the teach computing curriculum, a comprehensive set of resources that cover all aspects of computing from key stage one all the way through to key stage four. We've heard from the team that created the content. We've also heard from the teachers that will be using the content next year. And it would be great if you could share your experience of the curriculum by leaving us a voice message at ncce.io/voicemail. I'd like to thank our guests on this month podcast episode and you for listening and I hope you'll join us for future episodes of the Teach Computing podcast.

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