English National Curriculum:
Key Stage 2
Tooltip content
To create (and debug) simple programs.
learning objectives
Tooltip content
To acquire a basic understanding of flowcharts.
success criteria
- I can recognise a flowchart.
- I can follow the branches of a flowchart.
- I can create a flowchart.
top tips
- A flowchart is a diagram that represents the possible step-by-step order of a set of actions.
A flowchart might contain a ‘Start’, an ‘End’, ‘Actions’; ‘Conditionals’ (and ‘Loops’), which all have their own
specific shape.
Flowcharts
Selections
A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process.
The entry point of the chart.
The exit point of the chart.
Actions always begin with a verb and describe what to do.
Arrows show the direction of the flowchart by connecting 1 step to the next step in the process.
A selection processes what happens next after a conditional. Depending on the answer to the conditional, only one of the two branches will be selected.
TOPIC BACKGROUND READING
As our computer science skills develop so does the complexity of the
algorithms we need to create, and it is good practice to lay out and plan the steps needed to complete a program – before we begin. Flowcharts are a great tool to use during the planning phase.
A flowchart is a diagram depicting a process, a system or a computer algorithm. It is a diagrammatic representation of the solution to a given problem but, more importantly, it provides a breakdown of the essential steps involved in solving the problem.
Each step is independent of implementation as the flowchart only describes what should happen at that step, what input is needed and what the output of the step is, but it says nothing about how to implement the step.
Once a flowchart is in place, it can help find less obvious features of the
process that can then be refined to improve its efficiency, i.e. bottlenecks, flaws, unnecessary steps. It should be seen as an evolving diagram.
