Year 3 explored how digital devices connect and share information and how we ourselves are connected too! We began by thinking about our own connections to our families, school, and friends and how we communicate and share information every day, just like computers do.

Then we became computers. The children roleplayed as laptops, sending messages to their friends across the classroom. At first, we had to pass paper notes from one person to another, and we quickly realised that getting a message from one side of the room to the other took a lot of passing around! Once we added a “network switch” (a helper in the middle), our messages travelled much faster just like in real computer networks.

We also compared digital tools with non-digital ones, such as iPads to paper and pencils. The children noticed that both are great tools for drawing, but it’s much trickier to transfer a picture drawn on paper onto a computer.

We know understood that both people and computers rely on connections to share, communicate, and work together and that networks make everything happen much more quickly.