Databases

·         The type of property will allow you to select house flat etc

·         Added in just allows you to filter when the home was added to the database (don’t change)

·         Leave the under offer checkbox un checked

·         Click on find properties

·         Allow pupils 10 minutes to familiarise themselves with this set up

·         Explain how we are now going to role-play being estate agents and house buyers

·         One pupil from each pair comes out of the classroom the other remains on the computer as the estate agent.

·         Explain to the estate agents that they are going to try and find the right house for the buyer by searching the database. Explain that they will have to be very polite or the buyer may go elsewhere.

·         Take the buyers out of the classroom and explain that they are first time buyers who have £200,000 (adjust to suit your location) to spend maximum. They want a nice house with at least two bedrooms, central heating and a place to park the car.

·         After they have completed this swap roles and the new buyers could be a second time buyers who wants three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a garage

·         Play this game with different scenarios until about 10 mins from the end of the lesson

·         In conclusion ask pupils if they would have added any other buttons to search under? What would have made it easier to search (garage, central heating etc)

·         Finally tell pupils that this years challenge is to design and make their own house database

o        multiple choice, can select more than one (good for questions where they could be more than one answer from a limited amount of choices)

o        number questions (questions were the answers that are always a number)

o        date questions (questions where the answer is always a date, often good to put an example near the input field)

·         Hand out the packs of house data. Children to get into groups of four. Give children a little bit of time to have a look at this house data and then as a group to come up with some database fields that the data could fit into. I recommend getting pupils to feedback to the class on their ideas.

·         Finally give pupils time to design their own database on paper. Make sure they mark clearly what type of question they would use.

o        Not realising that a yes/no answer is a multiple choice question

o        Including superfluous questions such as number of windows

·         Secondly, go over how to create the different question types. Number, Multiple choice and text questions. Remember that pupils need to add an extra question to the multiple choice which is then removed when they use the esc button.

·         Now allow pupils the rest of the lesson to create their databases, monitor carefully to make sure pupils are choosing the correct question type as this cannot be changed once data is added to the database.

·         If anyone finishes early then encourage them to start lesson five inputting the house data into the database. However please see the note in bold. Pupils can’t add questions to a database once they have started inputting data!

·         Share the company motto “Where time is money”

·         They are being paid by the number of accurate records that they can insert into their own databases.

·         Introduce the pupils to the bonus scheme where for every set of five accurate records inserted (and checked by management) they will receive a cube and then at the end of the shift the number of cubes will be checked and certificates will be awarded which count towards the employee of the year award which is a trip to St Lucia all expenses paid.

·         Pupils collect a new house info sheet from a chair and return it when they have finished so others can use it.

·         Keep the lesson as fast paced as you can and you will get lots of records entered (This approach more than doubled my class data entry from last year)

·         In the plenary hand out certificates (you will need to make these) but split pupils into groups depending on how many fields they created so pupils with lots of fields can still win.

·         Highlight that you can either sort by numerical order or by alphabetical order and by clicking a second time in the column heading the order is reversed.

·         Allow pupils time to experiment (10-15mins)

·         Play the role play game that they played in lesson one where one pupil plays an estate agent and another plays the prospective buyer. Take the buyers out and prep them with a different house buying scenario. (Check your Totton info to make sure it can be achieved)

·         Is their database easy to use and quick to search?

·         Select the criteria you wish to sort from the top if it was in a multiple choice format you will be able to select it via a drop down menu.

·         Demonstrate various single criteria searches don’t forget to click on search to carry them out

·         Give pupils time to try this out

·         Now demonstrate searching under two criteria

·         Give pupils time to carry this out

·         Finally open a blank Word document and carry out a search but once you have inputted the criteria go to the word document and type it in. Then go back to Junior Viewpoint and carry out the search returning to the Word document to type in how many houses you found

I.e. > 200000

3 houses found

3 bedrooms

12 houses found

·         Nearer to the end of the session encourage pupils to record multiple searches (You can print these word documents to help you with the second report statement)