Little Man Computer from KS3 to KS5

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Last edit: 15 August 2022

English Key Stage 11-14 year (KS3), 14-16 years (KS4), 16-18 Years (KS5)

Scottish Curriculum Levels S4 - National 4/5 (15-16 years)

Resource Type Lessons, Teaching Resources, Example Programs and Live Lessons

Curriculum Topic Algorithmic Thinking, Computer Systems, Data & Information, Programming

The national curriculum poses a challenge for computer science teachers at KS3 - understand how instructions are stored and executed within a computer system.

Understanding the need for translators is a threshold concept for students, once understood it transformes their understanding of the need for high and low level languages.

Little Man Computer is one such tried and tested way of teaching this. However the many existing simulators are often challenging for younger users and non specialist teachers.

This resource is a much simplified version of Little Man Computer, called Little Robot Computer. These are the key features

- write instructions in full words
- view instructions in binary
- view the components of the Von Neumann Architecture
- view how to improve CPU performance and increase clock speed + use multicore, cache
- allows the use of loops to simplify branching

version 1.55 - sumulator link here