Interactive Replace (IR) sits at the Interactive row and Replace column of the PICRAT grid. Below: real Computing lessons for KS3 that classify as IR, plus anti-examples that look IR but are not.
Jamboard Parson's puzzle ordering shuffled pseudocode
Year 8 are sequencing algorithms before they write any code. The teacher has set up Jamboard frames holding three Parson's puzzles: a password checker, a times-table printer and a largest-number finder, each as ten shuffled pseudocode lines. Pairs drag the lines into working order. Each puzzle hides one distractor line that belongs to no correct solution, and spotting it is the moment the pair has actually read the code rather than pattern-matched the indentation.
The teacher brings one finished frame to the board per puzzle and asks a different pair to defend the position of the loop line, since where the loop closes is where these puzzles are won and lost. The paper version of this lesson, cut strips in envelopes, is a computing department tradition; the Jamboard version is the same puzzle without the strip that always goes missing.
Tools: Jamboard
MakeCode simulator investigation of a provided micro:bit program
Year 8 are starting inputs and outputs. Pairs open a teacher-provided program in the MakeCode simulator: it responds to button A, button B, both together and shake, with different LED patterns and one buzzer tone. The investigation sheet asks pairs to try each input, record the output, and then answer the reasoning questions: which block handles both-buttons, why does shake sometimes trigger twice, what would happen if the two button handlers were swapped. Pairs test that last prediction by swapping the handlers and running it.
The physical class kit does this lesson when all thirty boards are charged and none have walked; the simulator version runs the identical investigation on the day the trolley lets the class down. Next lesson, pairs write their own handlers from scratch, which is where the unit moves along the grid.
Predict-run-check on Replit replacing paper trace tables
Year 9 are reading code with loops and conditionals, the point in the course where predictions start going wrong in instructive ways. The teacher shares a Replit workspace of eight short Python snippets. The routine is fixed: read the snippet, write the predicted output in your book, run it, and if the prediction missed, write one sentence on why. Snippet five contains an off-by-one in a range; snippet seven mutates a list mid-loop; both are chosen because confident predictions fail on them.
Students who clear all eight write one snippet of their own designed to trick a partner's prediction, which quietly previews next lesson. The paper version of this routine, trace tables filled in a line at a time and checked against the teacher's answer, ran for years and taught the same discipline: the computer is the arbiter, and your model of the code is the thing under test.
Tools: Replit
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and key stage. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.