DCF Cymru Digital competence for Wales

Cover Lessons

Cover lesson ideas linking to the DCF, for a range of subjects, both offline and digital.

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Analysing Historical Bias Online

Year 9 · History · Intermediate Presentation

DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content

Pupils audit two web accounts of the Merthyr Rising of 1831 for loaded language and for what each one leaves out, quoting the exact words that give each writer away. They finish with a written verdict on which account is more useful to a historian and what warning would have to accompany it.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Computer/Laptop

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Evaluating Tone and Purpose in Two Accounts of the Rebecca Riots

Year 9 · History · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Producing → Sourcing, searching and planning digital content

Pupils compare two contrasting accounts of an 1843 Carmarthenshire tollgate protest during the Rebecca Riots (a magistrate's letter to the Home Office and a Welsh tenant farmer's petition to the Royal Commission), alongside a table of turnpike toll charges on lime, coal and market carts. They calculate the percentage of a farmer's weekly income spent on lime and road tolls, evaluate digital search queries for archive research, analyse how each writer chooses vocabulary and tone for their audience and purpose, and write a two-sided historical explanation.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper
  • Calculator

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Verifying Historical Photographs and Captions from the South Wales Coalfield

Year 9 · History · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Citizenship → Digital rights, licensing and ownership

Pupils investigate 4 viral social media history posts that reuse archive photographs of South Wales mining communities between 1910 and 1936 with cropped watermarks, wrong dates, or AI-colourised alterations presented as originals. Comparing the posts with official archive catalogue cards, pupils identify provenance errors, calculate 70-year UK copyright expiry dates, check Creative Commons licensing terms (BY, NC, ND and SA), and write accurate museum display captions with full TASL attribution lines.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Explaining How a Digital Footprint Lasts

Year 9 · IT · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Citizenship → Identity, image and reputation

Using three invented case files (an old post screenshotted and found by an employer, a uniform photo and a shared username that let a stranger work out a pupil's school and town, and a blog that impressed a college tutor), pupils sort active and passive footprint items and trace who saw each footprint and how. They practise combining sentences with although, because, unless and whereas and fix a comma splice, then write a 150 to 200-word explanation for Year 7 of why the internet never forgets, using at least 6 underlined connectives from 3 types and 2 sentences that open with a subordinate clause. Paper-based; no computers needed.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Planning a Backup Strategy

Year 9 · IT · Intermediate Presentation

DCF: Interacting and collaborating → Storing and sharing

Pupils use a case file on an Aberaeron photographer to separate sync from backup, calculate how much storage and upload time her data needs, and test three backup plans against five real disasters. They finish by writing a 3-2-1 backup plan with a monthly restore check. Paper-based; no computers needed.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper
  • Calculator

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Collaborative Maths Quiz

Year 9 · Maths · Intermediate Presentation

DCF: Interacting and collaborating → Collaboration

In teams of three, with allocated roles, pupils write one fifteen-mark round of algebra questions in a single shared document, including a mark scheme that awards method marks. They then swap rounds with another team, sit it, mark it against its author team's scheme and act on the feedback they receive.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Computer/Laptop

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Interpreting Box Plots and Averages for Broadband Speeds in Wales

Year 9 · Maths · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Data and computational thinking → Data and information literacy

A numeracy and data-literacy lesson in Maths comparing broadband download speeds (in Mbps) recorded across 15 homes in an invented rural Welsh village (Cwm Hafod) and 15 homes in a nearby market town (Trefelin). Pupils order the village data, calculate the five-number summary (minimum, lower quartile, median, upper quartile, maximum), range, interquartile range and mean for both places, explain why the interquartile range is fairer than the range when one farm has a private 310 Mbps full-fibre line, test 4 council meeting claims using quartiles, and write a precise statistical comparison report.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper
  • Calculator

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Reviewing a Pythagoras Revision Slideshow

Year 9 · Maths · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content

Pupils review an invented Year 9 pupil's first draft of 4 revision slides on Pythagoras' theorem, made for Year 8 pupils who will read them on phones. They rework the two examples (13 cm and 8 cm), spot an answer that cannot be right because it is longer than the hypotenuse, and find the mislabelled diagram and the claim that the theorem works on all triangles. They judge each slide against a checklist for audience and purpose, proofread the slide text for 17 errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar and notation, rewrite a run-on sentence and write praise, a question and a suggestion as feedback. Finally they redesign one slide on paper and justify each change for the audience.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper
  • Calculator
  • Ruler
  • Coloured pencils

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Comparing Transport Carbon Footprints and Timetables in French

Year 9 · MFL · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Data and computational thinking → Data and information literacy

Pupils compare 3 ways for a Year 9 exchange group of 30 pupils to travel from Cardiff to Paris (coach and ferry, train and Eurostar, and plane) using a French travel dossier with a bilingual glossary. They calculate journey durations across the 1-hour time-zone change (GMT to CET), total CO2 per pupil and for the group, and cost per pupil, then write 4 comparative sentences in French using plus... que, moins... que and parce que.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper
  • Calculator

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Composing a French Email

Year 9 · MFL · Intermediate Presentation

DCF: Interacting and collaborating → Communication

Pupils reply in French to an email from a partner school, producing a 120 to 150 word message with a subject line, three tenses and justified opinions. Marks turn on holding the formal vous register throughout and on getting every accent right.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Computer/Laptop

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Reviewing Online Translations

Year 9 · MFL · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content

Pupils compare a correct French email with a flawed machine translation of it, logging each error by type and quoting the French that caused it. They then produce a clean translation and a written judgement on when machine translation can and cannot be trusted.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Computer/Laptop

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Writing a Safe Pen-Pal Profile in German

Year 9 · MFL · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Citizenship → Identity, image and reputation

Pupils read 3 invented German pen-pal profiles from a partner school: one that gives away a full name, street address, mobile number, the hours the writer is home alone, the dates the house will be empty and a photo showing the house number; one that is safe but dull; and one that is safe and interesting. They identify what a stranger could misuse, sort 15 kinds of personal information into safe, think first and never share, and learn how German connectives affect word order: nothing changes after und, aber, oder and denn, the verb goes to the end after weil and comes straight after deshalb. They join sentences with each connective, then write their own safe 60 to 90 word profile with at least 5 connectives, check a partner's, and reflect on how a profile shapes their reputation.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Calculating the Size of Audio Files

Year 9 · Music · Advanced Presentation

DCF: Interacting and collaborating → Storing and sharing

Pupils work out how to store and share the recording of an invented school summer concert. From sample rate, bit depth and channels they calculate bytes per second, then the size of a single piece and of the whole 52-minute concert as uncompressed WAV and as MP3 at 320 and 128 kbps, with powers of 10 and percentage savings. They test each file against an email limit, a shared folder and a USB stick, then plan a lossless archive kept in 2 places, a view-only link for families, a file naming convention and the consent rules, and justify it with their numbers.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper
  • Calculator

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Creative Commons Licences

Year 9 · Music · Intermediate Presentation

DCF: Citizenship → Digital rights, licensing and ownership

Pupils match eight musician scenarios to CC BY, BY-SA, BY-NC, BY-ND, BY-NC-SA, BY-NC-ND or CC0, explain two uses that breach NonCommercial and NoDerivatives, and write a TASL credit line. They finish by choosing a licence for their own class track and stating what it gives away.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Pen and paper

Software / weblinks

See a completed example

Digital Synthesis in Music

Year 9 · Music · Intermediate Presentation

DCF: Producing → Creating digital content

Pupils learn which harmonics sine, triangle, square and sawtooth waves contain, then design three patches on paper - a sub bass, a bell pluck and a slow pad - with real cutoff and ADSR values. They build them in a browser synthesiser and record how the sound differed from the prediction.

Resources required

Tools required

  • Computer/Laptop
  • Headphones

Software / weblinks

See a completed example