Computer Science
Welcome to the Computer Science page.
Below you will find information on the course with a link to the Course Curriculum.
To view the Course Curriculum, please click here
Year 12
We focus mainly on Paper 1 topics in Year 12, making sure that we study topics such as data representation quite early so that the students can revisit that throughout the year. We also cover legislation and ethical, moral and cultural issues relatively early on so that students are introduced to how to answer these long answered questions early on.
We interweave programming into the course throughout the year, for example introducing LMC and assembly low level programming at the same time as we learn about the systems architecture, so that students can see how data is transferred around the CPU by the instructions given in an LMC programme. We make sure that students are practising high level programming throughout the year so that they are confident programmers by the time they undertake the project in Year 13.
We study Software Development towards the end of Year 12 so that this is fresh in the students’ minds as the project is being introduced. We normally introduce the project just before May Half Term of Year 12 so that the students can use their work experience to find suitable stakeholders for the project. We find students need quite a lot of coaching to think of an appropriate stakeholder and giving them that May Half Term and work experience soon after really helps with this.
We then study Computational Thinking (which is the start of paper 2) at the end of Year 12 or at the beginning of Year 13, so that the students can use that in the write up of the analysis for their projects. Similarly, we study Databases around the same time, at the end of Year 12 or at the beginning of Year 13, as this ties in nicely with the design phase of their projects.
Autumn |
The Characteristics of Contemporary Processors, input, output and storage devices (Components of a computer and their uses) Data types (Binary, hexadecimal, two’s complement, floating point, bitwise manipulation and masks, character sets) Systems software |
Spring |
Application Generation (utilities, translators, stages of compilation) Data Structures Boolean Algebra |
Summer |
Computing Related Legislation Ethical, Moral, Social, Cultural Issues Software Development Introduce the project |
Year 13
We have traditionally started Paper 2 topics at the start of Year 13, but I would like to start introducing that towards the end of Year 12 instead.
Although students have been practising their programming skills throughout Year 12, in Year 13, while they are doing the design of their projects, we start the module on programming techniques to ensure the students understand different programming constructs, such as object oriented programming that they may require for the development phase of their projects. Also, while they are doing the design phase, we revisit the importance of test data and algorithms so that that can be incorporated into the design phase.
Autumn |
Computational Thinking Web Technologies Databases Networks Compression Project: Analysis, design, start development |
Spring |
Programming Techniques Computational Methods Algorithms Types of Programming Languages Project: finish development, evaluation, submit |
Summer |
Revision and Exam Technique |