PGCE Teaching File

PROFESSIONAL NOTES

Subdomain: pgce.samgreencomputing.com

Lesson Plans

Here are some lesson plans.

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Schemes of Work

Let's investigate what is meant by a Scheme of Work. Click here to view the Hinchley Wood School list of items taught to Year 7. This document is entitled "Computer Science Curriculum Map" and is for the Autumn Term for Year 7. Is a curriculum map a Scheme of Work?

Below is the scheme of work for Year 7:

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Lesson Plans

Every lesson I teach, I produce a lesson plan. All my lesson plans are here. A rough naming scheme for each lesson plan:

<school>_<year>_<unit>_<lesson>

For example, HW_Y9_9.2_L1 is a lesson at Hinchley Wood, for year 9 students studying unit 9.2, and on their first lesson of the unit. The lesson numbering is local, not global. Just because a lesson is marked as "L1" is it not necessarily at the beginning of the year. It simply means that it is the first lesson of the aforementioned unit.

ENTRY020-31/10/25.

Assessment Schemes

A note is required on what is meant by "Assessment Scheme". It does more than an assessment record, which is merely a recording of the scores achieved by each student. An assessment scheme describes a shape, or structure, to be filled.

It makes claims about how the assessment of pupils relates to the learning outcomes. In some cases, the relationship might be questionable. Perhaps they way students are assessed does not cause them to learn the correct things. Perhaps, irrespective of what it causes students to do, what is assessed is not representative of the learning outcome. For example, students need to know X. In the assessment they are asked to do Y, and being able to Y is only a small part of knowing X - or not part of knowing X at all. It describes how various individual assessments combine. It describes how the assessment relates to the awarding of a certificate or degree or qualification. An assessment scheme would provide the answer to a question such as "In what circumstances will I fail my practical driving test?" The answer could be that four serious driving errors are made, or that six are made - the assessment scheme needs to settle on a particular number. Can a pupil in a school fail Year 9? Can a student in a school fail Year 8? How are Year 8 pupils assessed? If the Year 8 pupils take an examination and get marks out of 100, how are the marks categorised? Are there three bands or five bands? What if a pupil gets 0 marks in the examination?

A scheme is an officially organised plan or system. An assessment scheme, then, is an officially organised plan, created by the teachers, for the assessment of pupils. It involves design decisions (e.g. we will use group work, or we will use project work) as well as laying out systems of rules for how humans are to move through the aspects of the design (e.g. what is the rule for failing to take the exam? Does the pupil still pass the year? What are the rules which the teacher is going to follow in calculating the combined end of year grade?)

Click on the image above to view a PDF document. This will allow you to see, in detail, the order in which topics are learnt in Key Stage Three at Hinchley Wood School.

Hinchley Wood School publish (click here) the curriculum for Computer Science on their website, detailing what Year 7 and Year 8 will learn in each term.

This is how Year 7 are assessed:


This is how Year 8 are assessed:
This term, I am teaching Year 7 Scratch. With Year 8, we are working on spreadsheets. The Y8 pupils will be designing a basic software system for a cinema. They will use Google Sheets to create a plan of the seats in the cinema. Seats can either be adult or child.

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Assessment Records (ARs)

Observers have said to me (in lectures on campus) that they want to see evidence that the student teacher is assessing the knowledge of the students. They want to see, I think, a record of how specific students are doing. However, it should be assessment that I have performed, not merely evidence that the students have been assessed (by someone).

My plan for what I am going to provide here: screenshots from tasks completed by pupils, mainly Google Sheets.

No, include a link here, to the actual spreadsheet that contains the results of the Google Forms assessments that pupils take. On the page they are redirected to, viewers must provide credentials.

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Medium Term Planning

A quick note on what is meant by "medium term planning" and how it is distinguished from "long term planning".

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Long Term Planning

A quick note on what is meannt by "long term planning".

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Pictures of pupil work (anonymised)

This is template text. This is template text. This is template text.

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Observations of experts

I have been fortunate to sit in a number of teachers lessons. I tried to focus on what they do, including what they say, how they respond to different comments from pupils, how they move about the room, and so on.

Today on 23rd Jan 2026 I am sitting with the Year 12 class while they learn about data structures. They are learning about binary-to-denary. This is all about SLR 13 ("SLR 13" is a term from Craig and Dave resources meaning Student Learning Record, it may as well be Topic 13....) which is Data Types.

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Scripts

Scripts help a teacher to think about the way they use language. They help you to think about what you actually intend pupils to do at each point, and what they might intend you to do as a teacher.

By trying out new phrases, a teacher can try out new attitudes and states of mind.

Watch actor Windsor Cunningham here on using language to change your state of mind (he is discussing acting).

The Lesson Plan

Here are some thoughts on the Lesson Plan. It has become apparent that it is more efficient to generate a template lesson plan, for a particular type of lesson, along with plans for actual lessons that use the template. Originally, the lesson template had no date on it. It was not about a particular, existing lesson, after all. However, I have now decided that the template does need a date on it, for when it was generated. So now the lesson plan template will have a date field added. This decision will result in some inconsistency for a while: some templates will have a date on and some not.

Lesson Template Download

Impero Mastery

Software to control student computer screens is an essential part of being a computing teacher. The skill of a teacher is bound up with skill with the software. One popular software program is called "Impero". I pronounce it like the word "impair" because you're impairing student screens.

It was built by Jon Valentin, from Nottingham. Videos help one to explore its functionality:

MintClass

Software to control student computer screens is an essential part of being a computing teacher. The skill of a teacher is bound up with skill with the software. One popular software program is called "Impero". I pronounce it like the word "impair" because you're impairing student screens.

It was built by Jon Valentin, from Nottingham. Videos help one to explore its functionality: