Year 3 Computing and Algorithms

Date: 27th Jul 2020 @ 4:13pm

This term year 3 have been investigating the term “Algorithm” in computing with Mr Williamson. We discovered that an Algorithm is a list of instructions that a computer can follow.

We started by discussing what instructions you would give to “your robot self” to ensure it gets ready for school in the morning. After our initial ideas, we discovered that missing even the smallest of instructions could me that your algorithm can end up broken. For example: Many children gave instructions to wake up in the morning at 7am. They then proceeded to brush there teeth. Which would be completely fine when giving instructions to a human but a computer would follow these instructions to the letter and would have failed to get out of bed, pick up a tooth brush and run the cold tap.

We then discussed the term “Debugging”. The process of fixing these small algorithm mistakes.

During our final session we used what we had learnt to write and program algorithms for the Beebot robots. including a race!