Computer Science at KS5

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If you require any further information about the curriculum we are following in this subject, please contact the Head of Department.

Course ID
AQA 7517
Faculty
Computing
Department
Computing
Level
Key Stage 5 ('A' Level)
Head of Faculty
M. Duraku
Head of Department
M. Duraku

By the end of Key Stage 5, students will have extended knowledge about technologies used in industry such as network configuration, internet subnet masking, RFID tagging, printing devices and multithreading computer systems.

Students will be able to design, develop and test software for the real world using the most up to date principles such as artificial intelligence and incorporate a range of concepts such as projectile motions and Dijkstra’s algorithm. This curriculum also contains a unit which teaches students how to analyse exiting software products and further develop them as business and user needs grow.

Curriculum Termly Breakdown by Year

Year 12

Term Unit of Work Assessment
Autumn 1 Lesson 1 – What are data types? (P)
Lesson 2 – Natural and integer numbers?
Lesson 3 – Number systems
Lesson 4 – Nested ifs and switch statements (P)
Lesson 5 – Iteration (P)
Lesson 6 – What is an algorithm (P)
Lesson 7 – Subroutines (P)
Lesson 8 – Queues (not circular)
Lesson 9 – How to calculate with different number system
Lesson 10 – What floating point binary numbers?
Lesson 11 – Fetch, decode and execute (Stored program concept Von Neumann)
Lesson 12 – Harvard vs Von Neumann /Factors affecting performance
• multiple cores • cache memory • clock speed • word length • address bus width • data bus width.
Lesson 13 – Exception handling (P)
Lesson 14 – Binary vs linear algorithms
Lesson 15 – Access modifier Java (P)
Boolean operators
Lesson application and demonstration; book look; end of unit exam.
Autumn 2 Lesson 1 – Encryption
Lesson 2 – Finite State Machine
Lesson 3 – Java Programming (inheritance) (P)
Lesson 4 – Inheritance overriding (P)
Lesson 5 – Polymorphism (P)
Lesson 6 – DeMorgan part 1
Lesson 7 – DeMorgan part 2
Lesson 8 – Arrays single and Multi-dimensional arrays (P)
Lesson 9 – Erroneous data transmission
Lesson 10 – Rasta vs Vector graphic
Lesson 11 – Research Ascii vs Unicode
Lesson 12 – Lossless RLE compression (P)
Lesson 13 – Analogue vs digital
Lesson 14 – Decomposition, functional and procedural abstraction
Lesson application and demonstration; book look; mock 7516 exam.
Spring 1 Lesson 1 – Small program practise (P) 7516 section B
Lesson 2 – Small program practise (P)7516 section B
Lesson 3 – How can we instruct the processor
Lesson 4 – How do interrupts work
Lesson 5 – Process management
Lesson String handling and built in methods
Lesson 6 – Operating systems and scheduling operations
Lesson 7 – Small program practise (P)
Lesson 8 – Trace tables
Lesson 9 – Small program
Lesson 10 – RFID and laser printers
Lesson 11 – What are MIDI devices?
Lesson 12 – Pre-liminary material (P)
Lesson 13 – Pre-liminary materials (P)
Lesson application and demonstration; book look; end of unit exam.
Spring 2 The internet
Subnet mask
Lesson 1 – Programming paradigms
Lesson 2 – What are different LANs (A level)
Lesson 2 – How do we monitor wireless communications
Lesson 4 – What are dictionaries
Lesson 5 – Secondary storage devices (Research lesson)
Lesson 6 – Pre-liminary material
Lesson 7 – Pre-liminary material
Lesson 8 – Pre-liminary material
• hard disk • optical disk • solid-state disk (SSD)
Lesson 9 – Internal hardware components:
processor • main memory • address bus • data bus • control bus
• I/O controllers.
Lesson 10 – Translators (Assemblers, Compilers, Interpreters)
Lesson 12 – Systems vs Application software
Mock examination 7516
Summer 1 Preliminary material and Programming / recap on AS topics. Project work.
Summer 2 Databases and Java web-based apps. Lesson application and demonstration; book look; end of unit exam.

 

Year 13

Term Unit of Work Assessment
Autumn 1 Lesson 1 Trees
Lesson 2 Graphs:
• graph • weighted graph • vertex/node • edge/arc • undirected graph • directed graph
Lesson 3 Hash tables /stacks
Lesson 4 Circular queues (recap Year 13 2019)
Lesson 5 Vectors
Lesson 6 Tree traversal – pre-order • post-order • in-order (recap first)
Lesson 7 Graph traversal- Breadth first, depth first.
Lesson 8 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 9 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 10 NEA intro
Lesson 11 Turing machine
Lesson 12 Merge sort / insertion sort
Lesson application and demonstration. Book look.
End of unit exam.
Autumn 2 Lesson 1 Big O notation
Lesson 2 Reverse Polish Notation
Lesson 3 regular expressions
Lesson 4 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 5 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 6 UML
Lesson 7 UML-Class diagrams, hierarchy diagrams, data flow diagrams
Lesson 6 NEA
Lesson 7 NEA
Lesson 8 Introduction to functional programming
Lesson 9 Functional programming part 2
Lesson 10 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 11 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 12 NEA
Lesson 13 NEA
Lesson 14 NEA
Lesson application and demonstration. Book look.
End of unit exam.
Spring 1 Lessons 1 – 3 Maths with regular expressions (subsets)
Lesson 4 Backus Naur form
Lesson 5 Halting problem
Lesson 6 The internet
Lesson 7 Standard application layer protocols
Lesson 8 Public and private IP addresses
Lesson 9 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
Lesson 10 Network Address Translation (NAT)
Lesson 11 Compare JSON (Java script object notation) with XML
Lesson application and demonstration. Book look.
Mock examination 7517.
Spring 2 Lesson 1 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 2 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 3 NEA
Lesson 4 NEA
Lesson 5 NEA
Lesson 6 Client server model -WebSocket protocol
Lesson 7 Thin- versus thick-client computing
Lesson 8 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 9 Pre-liminary material
Lesson 10 NEA
Lesson 11 NEA
Lesson 12 NEA
Lesson 13 Big Data
Lesson 14 List processing
Completion of NEA tasks.
Summer 1 Recap Year 12 topics / Preliminary material and NEA. Revision. Lesson tasks.
Summer 2 ‘A’ Level Examination. ‘A’ Level Examination.

 

Extended Learning

Year 12

Websites Read Visit or Watch Extra
EBS Computing SharePoint; Stack Overflow. AQA AS and A Level Computer Science (PM Heathcote and RSU Heathcote); AQA A level Computer Science (Bob Reeve). AQA Converting between binary, hex and decimal; AQA ‘A’ Level Regular expression; Finite state machines; Types of Programming languages. Further maths activities.

 

Year 13

Websites Read Visit or Watch Extra
EBS Computing SharePoint; Stack Overflow. AQA AS and A Level Computer Science (PM Heathcote and RSU Heathcote); AQA A level Computer Science (Bob Reeve). AQA Converting between binary, hex and decimal; AQA ‘A’ Level Regular expression; Finite state machines; Types of Programming languages. Further maths activities.