Barefoot brings data to life with pizza!

Barefoot, the BT-sponsored computing programme, has launched a new series of free lesson plans that use pizza making to introduce the concept of data to primary school children. The brand new set of five Barefoot lesson plans take students through the planning and research phases of holding a Pizza Party with their classmates and include data modelling and research.

The Barefoot programme, which is now in its fifth year, recently partnered with the UK’s National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) to improve the reach and quality of computing teaching across England. Barefoot teaching resources are entirely free and in line with the curriculum, so teachers can download the lesson plans and use them in their classrooms immediately.

The new curriculum-aligned Pizza Party lesson plans teach children that their names, pizza topping choices, and their dietary requirements form their personal data. As the students capture this data and enter it into Excel spreadsheets, they follow step-by-step plans to make pizzas. The lesson series is interactive and simple so that students recognise how data works and how to approach problems logically; such as calculating quantities of different ingredients and oven baking times, and how to solve them.

Liz Williams, Director of Digital Society at BT said, “When you think about data very rarely does making a pizza come to mind, but this fun new lesson series introduces students to data collection, collaboration and algorithms in a really simple way.”

“Digital skills and being able to use technology are so important today, so primary school children learning to problem-solve and understand what data is through the magic of pizza is a great way to do it!”

Two hundred pizza boxes are ready to be sent to schools with Pizza Party posters, stickers along with a Chef’s hat! The first schools to request a workshop will receive a £25 grocery voucher to cover the cost of ingredients.

How can teachers get Pizza Parties started?

There are two ways schools can get the party started!

1.Schools who are new to Barefoot can request a FREE Barefoot Workshop to introduce them to the curriculum-aligned resources. The first two hundred schools that request a workshop by 19^th July 2019 will receive a Pizza Party box with goodies and £25 ingredients voucher when they hold their workshop.

2.By simply downloading the lesson plans teachers will be entered into a prize draw to win a Pizza box and £25 ingredients voucher!

Full terms and conditions can be found here.

By 2022, the UK will need an additional 500,000 workers in digital industries, which is three times the number of computer science graduates the UK has produced in the last ten years. These estimates reveal why the Barefoot programme is so important today; it provides primary school students with basic computing skills and provides teachers with curriculum-approved lesson plans that will help children prepare for the digital world in which we now live.

If you would like to learn more about the Barefoot Pizza Party resources and whether you are in time to claim your free Pizza Party pack, please visit https://www.barefootcomputing.org/