When we asked teachers on the Cambridge Panel what they would like to see in our new Cambridge IGCSE™ Information and Communication Technology series, the most popular answer was ‘differentiation’. Every student is an individual with different hopes, expectations, strengths, and needs. This is particularly true when studying ICT as students come to the subject with varying levels of experience.
The need for differentiation is something that experienced ICT teacher and Cambridge author, Evans Chikasa, knows first-hand. Evans has put this experience to good use in writing our Cambridge IGCSE™ Information and Communication Technology Practical Skills Workbook. Each topic features three activities, from a scaffolded approach to skills development. This approach allows learners to gradually progress through ‘Getting started’, ‘Practice’ and ‘Challenge’ activities, ensuring that every learner is supported.
A three-tiered approach
Evans has produced a series of free downloadable activities on spreadsheets for your students to use in class or at home. Each activity builds upon the skills developed in the previous activity. In the ‘Getting started’ activity, students create a spreadsheet model to meet a specific requirement. The ‘Practice’ activity builds upon the spreadsheet skills, asking students to edit a spreadsheet data model structure, including inserting cells, deleting cells, inserting rows, deleting rows, inserting columns, deleting columns. Students are required to make all data, labels, and formulae visible by adjusting row height, column width, and cell sizes. The ‘Challenge’ activity develops these skills further, requiring students to use features to enhance a spreadsheet, including text colour, cell colour, bold, underline, italic and shading, analysing usage to meet the audience’s needs.
Downloadable activities
These free spreadsheet activities are downloadable in a package of activity sheet and source files. This gives your students a sample of what they need to exercise their spreadsheet skills in class or at home. Evans has also created a package of activity sheet and source files answers, making marking easier for you.
