Kicking off the year 9 ICT scheme of work with databases, and I wanted a starter that didn’t involve people sat around answering quick fire questions.
So, I created the following headers, each on an A4 sheet – ID No, first name, second name, favourite colour. I then printed 5 A4 sheets, one each with the numbers 001 to 005, another 10 sheets with the first and last names of the first 6 students on the register and then added a final four blank sheets.
On entering the class each pupil got one sheet of paper.
Once everyone was in they were told they had all the pieces of a puzzle between them, but they had to work together to complete it on the central block of tables. It took them about two minutes to get the pieces laid out as a table, and we could then recap the key database terms (field, table etc) and perform some functions (data entry – adding favourite colour, sorting, seaching). The whole thing took a little under ten minutes and created a good sense of team work and problem solving from which we could build.