I had friends and colleagues who passed the CSA in June 2019. I’ve helped more than 200 colleagues pass the CSA since then, and have led many of the NCCE courses online and F2F. If you go to https://teachcomputing.org/courses you will see more and more Computing courses that include Pedagogy – talking about how we teach, not just what we teach. (This, allegedly, was because Nick Clegg did not think it was important to include in NCCE 1…).
I led the Creative KS3 residential in January and it was clear then that colleagues needed more time to apply their learning. All NCCE PDEs are rooted in research, but I always want to explain saying “and this is what it looks like…”. This year, I am going to support the courses that I lead with a series of blogposts about what I consider to be some of the most important ways to improve computer science teaching and learning in the classroom. In other words, if you feel brave in the next week/month or year and move outside your teaching comfort zone, what one thing might you do next, knowing it will have the biggest impact?
There are several sources to help you make that choice for computer science teaching. The NCCE have the 12 principles of pedagogy, and the Educational Endowment Foundation have detailed articles comparing cost and effectiveness.
I hope the following posts will help too.
Scheduled posts (future ones in italics –
Introduction
JOT4CST The 3 Computer Science books you should buy…
P1 Choosing edexcel Pearson Computer Science GCSE
P2 Getting all your programming onto an online course such as Trinket so that it is always in the same location for your students, whether they are working at home or at school. Debugging/variable tracking with trace tables with Thonny. : How we have done this with all 60 Edexcel programming lessons.
P3 identifying misconceptions from research and effective use with Diagnostic questions
P4 Narrative stories for students to understand pedagogies / Video dawn wall. Will it make the boat go faster. More podcasts.
P5 Programming pedagogies. / 12 principles / PRIMM / Sabateur / Paired programming / Simultaneous programming / Worked examples. / Reducing cognitive load.
P6 Features of Edxcel programming resources / Spiral. / Esp 10.3 to show lists and functions.
Th1 Knowledge and understanding of Hinterland. / Thence prior learning ahead of discussion in lesson – ie slight flipped learning. / Check misconceptions for Theory too.
Th2 Rosenshines principles – detail by Tom sherrington / Also posts from Alan Harrison and Will Lau’s going into mastery / Does unpack repack fit into this?
Th3 Low stakes testing. How Brain works / WM and LTM / Alan H blogpost / Interleaving/ A bit of Quizizz and blooket / C&D’s smart revise
Th4 KS3 Curriculum / course and priorities / Ofsted review doc / Priorities and careers / Priorities.
Th5 Metacognition Being a reflective practitioner. Same for teachers and learners. Setting goals. What I do at the moment. Whole of Ks4. Soft skills.
Th6 Organisation (expanding from metacognition) and ideas from Podcasts eg. High-performance and the Life Lessons podcast and Books eg. Atomic habits.
gr8computing.com 