1. NOTE:
Photos of children removed from slides
A dash of Computing, a shake of Topic and a sprinkling of Maths. The perfect recipe for fun loving but time squeezed teachers!

2. Bee-Bot time!
A very hands-on mixed year 1 and 2 class that need time to get to grips and just use resources before developing set objectives.
Bee-Bots were always going to be a favourite but I knew nothing would get done unless we’d all had a go a touching the buttons and programming our new friend to travel around the class so we spent some time sending them across the circle to each other!

3. Then it was time to take it further and using the plans from the Wessex Computing Planning website…..
….we set about exploring how far Bee-Bot moved in small groups using rulers and counters while the rest of the class explored maps of our village from past and present, plans of our school or had a go using the Bee-Bot app on iPads. This gave me time to focus on the children’s measuring skills too.

4. In small groups we thought about our own village and nearby town and created our own Bee-Bot mats which included some of the places we had thought about.
Then we started looking at the idea of programming Bee-Bot to move around our villages...
Some of us were a bit rusty on the idea of left and right and turns (be it quarter, half or whole) so we added in even more of numeracy with a little help form Hip Hop Granny!

5. Using the program cards we started trying to write programs to send Bee-Bot on his journey around the village.
We made sure we always started by clearing the previous program and we even added a pause at the traffic lights.

6. With our programming skills developing, it was time to bring more of our Geography topic into our lessons.
…. and the children practised their knowledge of the countries within the UK, their capital cities and the continents around the world.
Bee-Bot not only made it around our villages, but he was off to explore the rest of the UK and the world…

7. We wrote programs to send Bee-Bot on his way independently...
…and then debugged those programs which didn’t quite work!

8. We introduced the word “algorithm” using the Algorithm Rap
Now we could follow, write and debug algorithms to help us travel around the village, UK and world.

9. Now, with the help of the website Know Your Place (www. kypwest. org
Now, with the help of the website Know Your Place ( we are creating replica maps of our lovely village and will be able to send Bee-Bot off on even more journeys!

10. Kate Bradford

13. Plastic is dangerous to animals
The whale picture was taken by Greenpeace and it shows the amount of plastic that it had in its stomach that made it die early. This is in the phillipines.

16. USK2- Using Wessex Blocks in other curriculum areas
Janet Ross

18. History

22. Skype an expert
Arctic Live