I have sorted a variety of storage to enable easy classroom management:

Previously, we did this with our Year 7s and Digital Leaders.  

I did the following research, and you can see that the UCL unit was exemplary for what I needed.

UCL’s TUTORIALS:  Micro:bit – Getting Started / LED Display / Basic Functions / Advanced Functions / Projects with LED Display / Buttons / Accelerometer.  CHALLENGES: Consonant or Vowel? / Catch the Eggs / Caesar Cipher – Part I / Caesar Cipher – Part II.  

However, some of our lower ability students have struggled with text based programming and the Python IDLE IDE, so I was also keen to give them the option of using the blocks on the BBC Micro:Bit site.   This gives them a simulator to use at home (we are not giving out Microbits to Year 9s, just using them in class).

So this is our ​Scheme of Learning, these are the slides, 9_3_01_Microbit_Introduction, (based on Alexander Hadwen-Bennett’s slides)  and this is the List of Programs to try.  This is Pete Dring’s Python Simulator (for testing home learning), and the BBC site’s Block programming editor and index here.

Update: following the success of the Microbits enthusing students, as a department, we have identified opportunities for the following:

Year 7 – we are going to add to the current Year 7 Graphics unit by using the various BBC Block programs to show 5×5 pixels working; different brightnesses; images and animations.  This will build on Block programming in Unit 2 Scratch.

Year 8 will be the current Microbits 1 Unit development work of Python, but optional easier pathway using blocks.

Year 9 will be a Microbits 2 Unit with more challenging games.

*Please check out EduBlocks by @all_about_code – I will be looking at this in Year 7 too*

** I am presenting on microbits at #exabytes17 with @jonwits and @romillyc on Friday July 7th

*** I am running a 2 day course at York Stem Centre “Micro:bit in secondary computing CY224” with @PDDring and @CLCSimon on 20th and 21st November 2017.