This page lists what we actually have for OCR GCSE Computer Science J277. It is built from the live activities, so it is accurate on the day you read it.
The set with the most moving parts
Most subjects on this site are built from the same handful of interactions: read a card, answer questions, complete a sentence, order some steps. Computer Science is where that stops being enough, because the things being examined are processes.
This set leans hardest on the specialised interactions. Seven activities use a trace table, where the student fills in each variable's value line by line, exactly as OCR's own questions do. Two use a step simulator, walking a search or a sort through its passes one comparison at a time. There is a hotspot on the CPU, a labelled diagram, an image match for network topologies, and a lives quiz in twenty of the thirty-seven.
Those are not decoration. A trace table separates students who can follow code from students who merely recognise it, and it does so in a minute of class time, which is faster than asking. Watching a bubble sort make its second pass answers the question students actually have, which is why it needs so many passes.
The gap is spelled ERL
OCR does something neither other major board does: it defines its own pseudocode, Exam Reference Language, and expects students to read and write it in the exam. A correct answer in Python may get credit, but the question paper is in ERL and so is the mark scheme's model answer.
Two of these thirty-seven activities use ERL. The Control Flow Lab and Algorithm Detective, both of which put real ERL in front of the student.
Everything else teaches the concepts in plain language and generic pseudocode. That is fine for understanding a linear search and not enough for a student who has to write one in the exam's own notation under time pressure.
If ERL fluency is what your class needs, OCR's own papers in our past paper archive are free and unaltered, and the specimen material is where the notation is defined.
Both papers, all eleven topic areas
Paper 1 is systems: architecture, memory, storage, networks, security, systems software, and the ethical, legal and environmental impacts. Paper 2 is computational thinking, algorithms, programming, robust programs, Boolean logic and languages.
All eleven are covered, most with three or four activities. The longest things in the set are Defensive Design at twenty-four minutes, and the pair on performance factors and storage at twenty-two, which suits them to a homework slot rather than a starter.
The shortest, RAM against ROM at twelve minutes, is the one to use when a lesson needs five minutes filling honestly.
How it compares with the other boards
The three boards diverge more than the subject's reputation suggests, and it is worth knowing where.
AQA GCSE Computer Science examines relational databases and SQL, which OCR does not. Edexcel GCSE Computer Science splits the same material into twenty finer-grained topics and assesses Paper 2 entirely on application rather than recall.
OCR's distinguishing feature is the one above: its own reference language, sitting between the concept and the mark.
Using them
The three activities embedded further down are playable here without an account.
The lists below group by classroom use, worked out from what each activity contains. For how each is meant to be run, see ready-to-run revision activities. To put several in front of one class in order, build a sprint and share one link. Everything else, by subject and board, is on the revision pages.
What this page does not do
It does not teach Exam Reference Language, beyond two activities. Said at the top because it is the OCR-specific thing a teacher needs to know.
Nothing for the programming project. The knowledge underneath it is here, the writing of code is not.
It is not a scheme of work. For a shape to drop these into, see how to structure a GCSE revision programme.
It does not track anything, so there is no completion list to check.