Resources
Session Five: Writing Basic Code Directly in Python
This activity makes the leap from Blockly to Python programming. The 'grocery van driving challenge' is reduced from previous lessons to allow students to concentrate on syntax and correct coding using a limited set of instructions. Matching of Blockly and Python code is encouraged to assist the transition.
...Session Four
This resource contains the fourth session of the Active Approaches to Level Three Applied Science, produced by the Science Learning Centres and the Nuffield Foundation. The session looks at developing assignments, their learning objectives and structure and warns against malpractice and plagiarism. It also...
Session Four: Creating Simple Algorithms to Reach a Single Destination Along the Shortest Route
In the 4th lesson of a series for lower primary school computing, children use the online Rapid Router environment to learn more about algorithms. They learn that there can be more than one algorithm to achieve the same outcome, and that these can be selected according to efficiency. They further debug sequences in...
Session Four: General Solution Using Repeat until and if...do...
This Rapid Router lesson uses the Blockly language to develop ideas about selection, repetition, and conditionals. Children progress from specific instructions to spot patterns that can be made into generalised solutions. This important step helps learning about abstraction and pattern generalisation, two...
Session Four: Understanding More Python Commands
This activity in the Rapid Router series takes children further in their transition to text-based programming in Python.
By creating Blockly programs and comparing them to the automatically-generated Python code, children are encouraged to identify code which matches. The complexity of the problems is...
Session Nine: Children Create Their Own Routes
This lesson, in the Blockly Rapid Router series, challenges children to create their own maps which are then offered to classmates to solve. Creating the maps requires logical...
Session One
This resource contains the first session of the Active Approaches to Level Three Applied Science, produced by the Science Learning Centres and the Nuffield Foundation. The session includes two activities: Gallery of quotes and Making sense of texts.
*Gallery of quotes - students are asked to read and...
Session One: Recap on Using a Simple Repeat Loop
This lesson recaps some of the learning from the Key Stage One Blockly course on Rapid Router. It touches on repetition in programs, and requires children to create an algorithm challenge that requires loops to solve it efficiently. The challenges are in the context of programming a groceries delivery van.
...Session One: Unplugged Algorithms for Moving Along a Route
A basic lesson that introduces the idea of algorithms and simple sequences of commands. The online Rapid Router environment is introduced, after the children use some 'unplugged' activities to develop their thinking.
Session One: What Do We Already Know? Blockly Recap
This activity follows-on from previous exercises using the Blockly editor on the Rapid Router website. It reviews what the children have learned before they proceed to using text-based programming.
The exercise looks at the most advanced ideas used with the Blockly-based phase of the Rapid Router scheme,...