Programming is the part of the course pupils most need to practise, and the hardest to practise well. Two new activities help: Spot the Bug and Parsons puzzles.
Spot the Bug
Each program has a mistake in it, or two where it says so. Pupils tap the line where the mistake is, then choose the change that makes the program work.
- Two steps: finding the mistake and fixing it, the same skills the exam papers test.
- Six programs a go, picked at random from the subtopic, so every go is different.
Parsons puzzles
All the lines of a working program, shuffled. Pupils tap each line to put it in order, then indent the lines that belong inside a loop, an if or a function.
- Five puzzles a go, again picked at random.
- Lines that belong together, such as several inputs in a row, come as one block.
- Turtle programs draw their picture, so pupils can see what the program makes.
When you set either activity, the whole class gets the same programs, retakes included, so the results compare fairly.
Every program has really been run
Before a program goes on the site, it's run in a locked-down checker.
- In Spot the Bug, the mistake really breaks the program, the fix really mends it, and it can't be fixed on another line instead.
- In Parsons, the checker tries the other orders of the lines too. If another order also works, that's marked right as well.
Your exam board's Python
The programs only use the parts of Python your board's papers use: Edexcel's Programming Language Subset, or the parts of Python that match OCR's Exam Reference Language. They also only use what the subtopic has taught so far, so an early selection puzzle won't sneak in a function.
There are over 1,200 Spot the Bug programs and 900 Parsons puzzles across 45 subtopics, for OCR GCSE, Edexcel GCSE and KS3 Computing. Find them with the other activities on each programming subtopic.