United Kingdom · National Curriculum Attainment Targets
Year 7 Computing
A comprehensive introduction to computational thinking and digital systems designed for the transition to secondary school. Students move from being passive users of technology to becoming creators through programming, networking basics, and data modeling.
01Impacts and Digital Literacy
This unit establishes safe and effective working practices while exploring the societal impact of technology. Students learn to manage their digital footprint and navigate the school network securely.
Students will explore what it means to be a responsible digital citizen and the importance of online etiquette.
Students will learn about appropriate communication and behaviour in various online environments, including social media and forums.
Exploring how personal data is collected and the long term consequences of an online presence.
Students will learn to manage privacy settings on various platforms and understand how their online identity is constructed.
Understanding the forms of cyberbullying, its impact, and strategies for prevention and response.
Understanding common threats like phishing and malware and how to defend against them.
Students will learn best practices for creating strong passwords and explore different authentication methods.
Students will develop critical thinking skills to assess the credibility and bias of online sources.
Students will explore copyright law and fair dealing in the UK, examining how digital content is protected under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. They will learn to distinguish between lawful fair dealing exceptions and copyright infringement, applying these principles to real-world digital scenarios.
Exploring the current and future societal impacts of Artificial Intelligence, including ethical considerations.
Investigating the environmental impact of technology and exploring ways to promote sustainable computing practices.
Students will be introduced to the four pillars of computational thinking: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithms.
Breaking complex problems into smaller parts and removing unnecessary detail to focus on the core issue.
Students will learn to identify and remove unnecessary details to focus on the essential aspects of a problem.
Identifying similarities and trends in data or problems to make predictions or simplify solutions.
Creating and interpreting flowcharts to represent logical processes.
Translating real-world problems into pseudocode, a structured English-like representation of an algorithm.
02Computational Thinking and Logic
Focuses on the core problem solving techniques that underpin computer science, including abstraction and decomposition. Students learn to solve problems without initially using a computer.
Exploring how to evaluate algorithms for efficiency and identify opportunities for optimisation.
Introduction to fundamental logic gates and their truth tables as building blocks of digital circuits.
Understanding Boolean operators and writing simple Boolean expressions to represent conditions.
Students will be introduced to the Scratch interface and basic block programming concepts.
Mastering the order of execution and using repetition to make code more efficient.
Understanding and implementing different types of loops (repeat, forever) to create efficient and concise code.
Students will learn to declare, assign, and use variables to store and manipulate data in a program. Includes the concept of variable naming, data types, and updating values during program execution.
Implementing conditional statements (if-then-else) to allow programs to make decisions based on conditions.
Students will learn to use events to trigger actions and make programs interactive.
Developing strategies for identifying and fixing errors (bugs) in Scratch programs.
Understanding how to create and use custom blocks (functions) to modularize code and promote reusability.
Understanding the role of the CPU as the 'brain' of the computer and its key functions.
Differentiating between volatile (RAM) and non-volatile (ROM) memory and their roles in a computer system.
Comparing different types of storage devices, including hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs).
Understanding how humans interact with machines through various peripherals.
Exploring different output devices and their role in presenting information to users.
An introduction to the fundamental cycle by which a CPU processes instructions.
03Data Representation
Investigating how computers use binary to represent all types of data, from numbers to images and sound.
Understanding the role of operating systems and application software in managing computer resources and user interaction.
Learning to convert between base-2 and base-10 number systems.
Practicing conversion from binary to denary numbers.
Practicing conversion from denary to binary numbers.
Performing basic addition operations with binary numbers.
Understanding how text characters are encoded using standards like ASCII and Unicode.
Understanding pixels, resolution, and how colors are encoded in binary.
Exploring how sound is sampled, digitised, and stored as binary data.
Understanding the concepts of data compression and differentiating between lossy and lossless methods.
Students will learn about the basic concepts of computer networks, including their purpose and benefits.
Differentiating between LANs and WANs and understanding their respective applications.
Comparing different ways of connecting computers in a local area network.
Identifying and understanding the function of key network hardware components.
Understanding the Internet as a global network of computers and its underlying infrastructure.
Understanding HTML, web browsers, and how search engines index the internet.
An introduction to the basic building blocks of web pages: HTML for structure and CSS for styling.
Exploring various tools and methods for online communication and collaborative work.