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.