Year 8 – Lesson 4 – It's only logical
Learners are likely to be familiar with the NOT, AND, and OR logical operators from programming (and especially the Year 7 programming units). Through practice, learners can master the use of logical expressions in software, but it is a different story altogether to uncover the connection between logic and computing hardware.
This is the deeper goal of the lesson: to bridge the gap between logic and circuits, and make the direct link between them explicit.
This is the last step in the learners’ journey through the hierarchy of a computing system, from programs, to the hardware responsible for executing the programs, and now, to the fundamental components that comprise this hardware.
Learning objectives
- Describe the NOT, AND, and OR logical operators, and how they are used to form logical expressions
- Use logic gates to construct logic circuits, and associate these with logical operators and expressions
- Describe how hardware is built out of increasingly complex logic circuits
- Recall that, since hardware is built out of logic circuits, data and instructions alike need to be represented using binary digits
Package contents
- Lesson plans
- Slide decks
- Learner resources
- Homework
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