Our Introduction to Coding programme only covers the coding components of the Victorian and Australian Digital Technology curriculums. This section introduces the coding components.

Overall, the Victorian (VDTC) and Australian (ADTC) DigiTech Curriculums are almost identical. The difference is that the ADTC is specific about years, while the VDTC focuses on “levels”. At Years (Levels) 7 and 8, both curriculums say that:

“They [the students must] broaden their programming experiences to include general-purpose programming languages, and incorporate subprograms into their solutions.”

General-purpose programming languages means real-world text-based programming. While block-based programming is a great way to learn the fundamental concepts of coding, it isn’t sufficient to meet the coding requirements of curriculums at this level. Instead, students need to write code in a language such as Python, and begin to experience the real-world challenges such as getting syntax right, writing neat code, naming variables, indenting code, and getting capitalisation right.

Coding in Years 7 and 8

Both the VDTC and ADTC require that students use a text-based coding language to:

• Build a game that models the real-world
• Program a robot that interacts with the real-world
• Write programs that provide user navigation and input, and have “controlled repetitions”
• Build simple programs that have loops, decisions, and functions

Beyond the coding requirements, they also require that students use diagrams or the English language to:

• Investigate and design simple algorithms
• Desk-check algorithms before they are coded
• Use diagrams to represent key decisions
• Describe simple algorithms

They also ask that students break down problems into sub problems, and start with simple solutions that evolve to model real-world problems.

Our Introduction to Coding Programme

Our Introduction to Coding programme covers most of the requirements described in the previous section. Specifically, by completing the programme students will:

• Build a game that models the real-world
• Write programs that provide user navigation and input, and have “controlled repetitions”
• Build simple programs that have loops and decisions

Students use diagrams or the English language to:

• Investigate and design simple algorithms
• Desk-check algorithms before they are coded
• Use diagrams to represent key decisions
• Describe simple algorithms

Students break down problems into sub problems, and start with simple solutions that evolve to model real-world problems.

Our Year 8 Programme

The Intermediate Coding programme reinforces all of the material in the Introduction to Coding programme at a higher level of complexity, and it covers the remaining requirements for Years 7 and 8. Students will additionally program a robot that interacts with the real-world and learn about functions.

ADTC Curriculum Coverage

Our programmes at Year 7 and 8 are designed to cover the coding requirements of the ADTC. In the diagrams below, which are drawn from the ADTC site, the elements we cover are marked with a green check mark. If we only partially cover an area, it is marked with a red question mark.

Overall, our programme does not cover the broader requirements of the ADTC. These need to be covered in other Digitech offerings across Years 7 and 8. This is shown graphically in the following picture:

License Information

These CS in Schools lessons plans, worksheets, and other materials were created by Toan Huynh and Hugh Williams. They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.