Key Stage 2 is where children start to make things with technology that other people will use, and where a class can begin collecting its own data.
Year 5 narrate a Book Creator story of a raindrop for the Year 2 class. Year 6 write a GarageBand soundtrack synced to a silent 30-second storm clip. Year 5 build a Scratch quiz on the Anglo-Saxons with a sprite that reacts to answers.
The micro:bit earns its place in these years. Year 4 set a frost alarm for the school vegetable beds from their own readings. Year 5 graph noise levels live from six micro:bits placed around the school.
Shared boards work well with this age group when the teacher uses what they show: Year 6 revise their guesses about a mystery Roman object clue by clue on Padlet. Several topics here are taught in all nine cells: the water cycle, equivalent fractions, states of matter and area and perimeter.
Art
Once a week for half a term, each child draws one object from the class nature table with Seesaw's drawing tool and adds it to their journal.
Each child photographs six to eight colourful details around the school grounds and arranges them into a titled collage in Canva.
Each child paints a cut fruit from observation in Procreate, working on a single layer with one brush as they would with poster paint.
Computing
Each child programs a Scratch character of their choice to dance in a loop, change colour and jump when the space key is pressed.
Each child builds a three-question Scratch quiz about the Anglo-Saxons, using if-then-else so the sprite reacts to right and wrong answers and keeps a score.
Pairs clip red, amber and green LEDs to a micro:bit and code the UK traffic-light sequence, with a button that brings in a pedestrian phase.
Groups plan a sequence of moves to get a Bee-Bot from the start square to a target on a grid mat, predict the route, run it and fix any errors.
Design and technology
Pairs design a card night lantern for a Reception child, program a micro:bit in MakeCode to light up when the light level drops, and adjust the program after testing it in a dark cupboard.
English
After reading The Selfish Giant, each pupil posts one sentence on its main idea to a class Padlet, and the teacher uses the range of answers to teach what a main idea is.
Groups drag mood-word labels onto stanzas of Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman on their own Padlet Sandbox card, and the teacher compares the groups' choices in the plenary.
Grade 4 work on Lexia Core5 comprehension activities at their own level while the teacher takes the group the programme's report flagged for a short teacher-led lesson.
Each pupil posts a prediction for the next chapter of Kensuke's Kingdom, the class votes on the likeliest, and after the reading pupils check their predictions against the text.
Grade 3 listen to the teacher's recorded reading of The Iron Man's first chapter in Book Creator, with a voice note beside each hard word, replaying pages as they need.
Grade 5 watch a coral reef extract from Our Planet in Edpuzzle, where the teacher's recorded voice notes stop the video at five points to model an inference.
The class watches Michael Rosen perform his poem Chocolate Cake on his YouTube channel, with the teacher replaying short sections so children can hear how he uses pace, pauses and voices.
Geography
Fifteen pairs each survey one habitat zone across a week, then add a placemark to a shared Google Earth project with photos of what they found and their own notes.
Each child pins four public landmarks on a class Padlet map, adding a photo and a short recorded explanation of what happens there.
Pairs write and illustrate a six-page Book Creator book following one drop of water round the water cycle, recording their own narration on each page for Grade 1 to listen to.
Groups measure temperature and wind at six spots in the school grounds, take a 360 photo at each, and build a CoSpaces Edu tour where visitors click to hear why each spot is warmer, colder or more sheltered.
Each child makes a one-page explanation poster of the water cycle in Adobe Express, with a diagram and four short numbered paragraphs, printed for the Grade 2 corridor.
Groups take temperature readings around the school vegetable beds for a week with micro:bits, then code an alarm that shows a snowflake, and keeps showing it, once the temperature falls below a level they chose from their readings.
Pairs program a Scratch model of the water cycle in which a sun slider sets how fast water evaporates, the cloud grows until it is full, and rain falls back to the rivers and sea.
Six groups code micro:bits to send sound levels by radio from different parts of the school, the class watches the readings arrive as a live graph, and they build a noise map from it.
Pairs type a fortnight of their own weather-station readings into Scratch lists and code an animated report whose rain, cloud, wind and presenter's advice are decided by the numbers, then run it on each new day's readings.
Pairs answer a twelve-question live Kahoot built on common water cycle misconceptions, and the teacher stops after any question most pairs get wrong to settle it with a quick demonstration.
Children drag eight labels and four arrows onto a picture of sea, hills and sky in a Seesaw activity, then write under it how the water moves round the loop.
Pairs spin a live globe on earth.nullschool to find where the air is holding the most water right now, check whether the sea beneath is warm, and follow that wet air to where it is raining.
On a showery morning the teacher opens Windy's cloud and rain layers on the board so Grade 4 watch cloud and rain moving in from the Atlantic towards their own school.
The teacher talks through a PowerPoint of eight photographs taken around the school, from a drying puddle to a misted window, and children copy and label the cycle in their books.
The class watches a time-lapse of their own water-cycle bag, taped to a sunny window and filmed by a school tablet across a whole school day, as droplets form, grow and run back down.
History
Each pair pins its civilisation's heartland and one place it traded with on a class Padlet map, and the class looks for where civilisations met.
Pairs guess the use of a mystery Roman object from a close-up photo, then update their guess on Padlet as the teacher reveals two more clues.
Maths
Each child makes a page for a class Book Creator book, drawing one fraction family and recording a spoken explanation, which families and Grade 2 then hear.
Pairs write three rectangle riddles that each have exactly one answer, post them on a private Padlet wall, and read the answers that pairs in the other Grade 4 class add underneath.
Each child designs a sixteen-square quilt patch in Paint that is half, a quarter and two eighths in different colours, labels each colour with two equivalent fractions, and adds it to a class quilt.
Each child designs a zoo plan in Seesaw with five rectangular enclosures of 12, 16, 24, 30 and 36 m², chooses the length and width of each, and works out how much fencing the whole zoo needs.
Each child programs a Scratch project that asks for two fractions, draws them as equal-length bars one under the other, and lets a partner test whether any pair is equivalent.
Pairs build a Desmos rectangle whose sliders set its sides and whose rules report area and perimeter, write three challenges for Grade 3, watch them try it, and rebuild whatever tripped them up.
Grade 3 play a live Kahoot whose wrong answers come from common fraction errors, and the teacher stops the game to reteach with a fraction wall when the answer spread shows the add-one mistake.
Pupils sort fraction cards, shown as digits and as fraction bars, into three equivalence groups in a Desmos card sort while the teacher watches every sort on the dashboard.
Pupils answer three self-paced rounds of ten mixed times-tables questions on Wayground, and the teacher reteaches the facts the class report shows are weakest before each new round.
Pupils choose the equation that matches each of ten word problems from four look-alike options, and the teacher uses the live response summary to discuss the most popular wrong choice.
Grade 3 drag fraction labels onto shaded shapes across six Seesaw pages and circle the two shapes on each page that show the same amount, including a 2/3 and 3/4 trap.
Grade 4 work out ten perimeter and area questions in their books and type each answer into a Microsoft Form, which the teacher reads after school and goes through with the class the next morning.
Pairs work through a week of micro:bit light readings from three places the class chose, find what fraction of each day each place was lit, and group the hours to build fraction families.
Pairs trace the boating lake in the local park with Google Earth's measure tool, first with 6 clicks, then 15, then 40, and track how the perimeter keeps growing while the area settles.
The teacher drags a GeoGebra slider that re-cuts a shaded bar into more and more equal parts while the shaded amount stays fixed, and Grade 3 watch 3/4 become 6/8, 9/12 and 12/16.
Grade 4 watch the teacher drag a GeoGebra rectangle whose perimeter stays at 20 cm, predicting on mini whiteboards what happens to its area as it changes from 1 cm by 9 cm to a 5 cm square.
Grade 3 watch a short animation of a chocolate bar split into halves, quarters and eighths, drawing each stage in their books, and write their first fraction family.
Area and perimeter: follow the teacher's worked example of an L-shaped garden with two missing sides
Grade 4 follow the teacher's worked example of an L-shaped garden, 12 m by 9 m with a corner cut out, drawn in Microsoft Whiteboard on the board, copy it into their books, then answer six textbook questions.
The teacher runs a whole lunar month over the school's town in Stellarium in two minutes, stopping at every eighth of the cycle, and Grade 3 name the fractions and find that the 'first quarter' Moon is 2/8 of the way round.
Grade 4 watch slow-motion footage of a litre of water spreading over their chalked metre square, paused by the teacher at each half second so they can count squares and estimate the area as it grows.
Music
Each child composes an eight-bar melody in Song Maker in which the second phrase answers the first, playing it back and changing notes until the answer sounds finished.
Each child records four body-percussion ostinatos on separate tracks and layers them into a 16-bar groove that builds up one part at a time.
Each child composes a 30-second soundtrack for a teacher-supplied silent storm clip, then lines it up with the video and fixes the places where music and picture do not match.
Groups of three compose a four-bar body-percussion rhythm in stick notation, rehearse it and record the performance as a voice note in Seesaw for the teacher to assess.
Pairs compose a two-bar question and a two-bar answer on GarageBand's on-screen keyboard, set to the major pentatonic scale, and perform them live over a class drone.
Each child arranges a 24-bar piece from BandLab's loop library in three sections, bringing layers in and taking them out to build and thin the texture.
PSHE
A school tablet time-lapses two weeks of sealed bread slices touched with unwashed, water-rinsed and soap-washed hands, and Grade 4 watch the mould appear and spread in under a minute.
RE
Pairs drag eight given labels onto a photograph of a puja tray in a Seesaw activity and add the purpose of each item from a word bank.
Science
Pairs script and record a 45-second spoken answer in GarageBand to a question from Grade 1, such as where a puddle goes, re-recording until it is clear enough for six-year-olds to follow.
Each child designs a fact card in Canva for one of ten materials, with a drawing, its state at room temperature and its melting temperature, ready to print for a class ordering game.
Pairs code a Scratch model in which 24 particle clones jiggle in place, slide about or fly around the stage as a temperature slider passes 0°C and 100°C, then test each other's models for things real water never does.
Pairs test a tray of objects with a magnet, photograph their two piles, post them to magnetic and non-magnetic columns, and the class investigates the objects pairs disagree on.
Pairs post a predicted newton meter reading for pulling a box of books with and without rollers, the teacher runs the demo, and pairs reply to their own post with what happened.
Pairs drag eight pictures of everyday changes, from a dripping ice lolly to a misted bathroom mirror, under melting, freezing, evaporating or condensing in a Seesaw activity, then type a reason for two of them.
Pairs heat and cool water molecules in PhET's States of Matter: Basics simulation, testing three predictions about what particles do as a solid melts, a liquid boils and a gas is cooled again.
Grade 3 watch three short clips the teacher has chosen, molten iron being poured, a gallium spoon melting in warm water and liquid nitrogen boiling in a bowl, and place each material on a temperature line in their books.
The teacher drags photographs of twelve everyday materials, from a brick to the bubbles in a fizzy drink, into three columns on the board after Grade 3 have each decided solid, liquid or gas on mini whiteboards.
Grade 3 watch slow-motion footage of dry sand and water poured side by side by two of their classmates, seeing separate grains bounce and heap up while the water breaks into drops, joins up again and settles flat.
Lessons that look like one cell but sit in another
Useful counter-examples when you are checking your own lesson placement on the PICRAT grid.
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.