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CA2 – Lesson Plan

The second continuous assessment is the plan for your lesson.

Learning outcomes

  1. Be able to design learning activities and create teaching material for those.
  2. Be able to write a lesson plan.
  3. Be able to embed computer science topics into the Key Stage 3 curriculum.

Timeline

  • Topic selection during 2h session on 7 Nov.
  • Submissions due 2 Dec on Canvas.
  • 5min pitch of your lesson to group in 2h session on 5 Dec.
  • Delivery over first 9 weeks of Semester 2 (see module overview).

Requirements

Some of the requirements are discussed in more detail in Unit 3 – Lesson Planning.

Topic

The goal is to create an engaging lesson for Key Stage 3 students. Ideal lesson topics and activities are all of the following:

  • Relatable for all students (i.e., have relevance to their life & environment),
  • inclusive, both of students with disabilities and of students with varying prior knowledge,
  • connected to the National Curriculum in Computing without duplicating content from there,
  • feature a Eureka moment (i.e., lead students to understand a previously mysterious concept),
  • holds opportunities for students to achieve a sense of achievement on different levels (catering to different levels of engagement and ability),
  • fun and memorable.

Check the lesson topic brainstorming channel on our Team for some inspiration for potential topics; be creative!

Submission

Your submission should consist of

  1. A blurb/sales pitch of your lesson
  2. a lesson plan following the template below,
  3. slides (or similar material) for the lecture part(s),
  4. any additional material needed for the activities.

Lesson Plan template

Use this template for writing your lesson plan:

Example blurb

Here’s an example how your blurb could look like.

Lego EV3 Drives the Warehouse

Robots managing large warehouses are one of the many example where automation helps humans to solve a task faster and cheaper. For this to be effective, robots need to be at least partially autonomous, i.e. able to sense and react to the physical world without (constant) human intervention. In this hands-on lesson, pupils program Lego EV3 robots to follow a line, avoid obstacles, and ultimately navigate a warehouse safely and autonomously.

Collaboration policy

You are welcome to collaborate on finding topics and inventing fun activities.

The written submission (lesson plan and teaching material) must be your individual work; the University’s rules for plagiarsm and collusion apply (see Code of practice on assessment).
Your submission will be checked by Turnitin’s plagiarsm checker upon submission.

Marking scheme

As a rough indication of the relative importance, the overall mark will consider the following criteria:

  • Content (20%)
    Is the technical subject knowledge correct? Has the student put their own ideas into the session?
  • Teaching Materials (30%)
    Are materials at an appropriate level and free from errors? Are the materials using visuals or multi-modal representations effectively? Do the materials motivate the subject and make it engaging for a wide audience?
  • Activities (30%)
    How well do the activities facilitate learning of the topic? Are the activities suitable for sparking interest in computer science?
  • Reproducibility (15%)
    Is the lesson described in sufficient detail to run it based on the plan? Is the timing of the session realistic?
  • Context (5%)
    Has the session been linked to appropriate National Curriculum topics? Does it adequately complement lessons on the Teach Computing Curriculum?

Marking will follow the standard marking descriptors (see §5.2.2 of the Student Handbook).

Further resources

Example lesson plans

Inspiration for the format and level of detail for the lesson plans can be found in the lessons of the Teach Computing Curriculum; for example Y9, Unit “Python programming with sequences of data”, Lesson 1 (of 6).

Note that the lesson plan format is slightly different (cf. lecture from Unit 4).

Pedagogy best practices

Check if one of the time-tested pedagogies can be applied to your lesson.