Britannia Village Primary School

At Britannia Village Primary School (part of the Britannia Education Trust), Newham, they believe that children learn best through opportunities which are creative, motivating and challenging. They have made a substantial investment in ICT with Year 2-6 pupils having 1:1 Chromebooks and are a Google Reference School.

Pupils are introduced to Scratch in Year 3; so the Picoh Pilot gave the opportunity for their Year 5 pupils to build on and extend their computing skills online with Scratch. Having the Picoh gave it purpose and enabled the pupils to see the coding principles come to life.

How did Britannia Village use the Picoh?


  • Using the context of the Picoh being a “Quiz Master” - the Picoh responds based on conditionals

  • Connecting the Picoh to the school’s Chromebooks

  • Using Scratch online to understand variables and conditionals (with Year 5 pupils)

  • Introduction to higher order thinking in terms of the coding principles

  • Debugging and adapting code

  • Allowing children to creatively develop the project in their own directions

Quotes regarding the pilot from Britannia Village Primary:

“Seeing the coding principles coming to life resulted in great excitement from the Year 5 pupils.”

“At the bottom of the Scratch blocks there are blocks specific to the Picoh. We looked at how they can turn their heads, blink, change eye movements and change colours … and they [pupils] really enjoyed exploring all the different things they could make it [the Picoh] do”


“My students (are) starting to actually adapt the code in different ways and be more creative, rather than (just) following instructions or me showing them how to do it and then them copying or imitating. They are actually thinking ‘why don’t we make it shake its head or change the colour if they get an answer wrong!’ and that’s been really exciting for me. That’s the power of having a physical device, that then they start to see the purpose of it, and they start to understand why they are doing it and then they start to have more creative ideas.”

Introduction to the pilot

Luke Craig (Technology Lead Practitioner at Britannia Education Trust) explains how the Year 5 pupils have been using the Picohs online with Scratch and how using the Picoh has helped with the pupils understanding of variables.

How has the pilot gone?

Luke Craig (Technology Lead Practitioner at Britannia Education Trust) reflects on the pilot. He explains they planned a series of six lessons and that pupils understanding and enjoyment was enhanced through their use of Picoh with Scratch.

How have you been using the Picoh?

At Britannia Education Trust they have used the Picohs with their Chromebooks. Luke explains how simple this was as a Google Admin.

How did you link to the Near Space Launch (NSL) materials?

Luke Craig (Technology Lead Practitioner at Britannia Education Trust) says the NSL materials got the pupils really excited and one of the pupils discusses the adventure the Ohbot went on.

What challenges did you experience? What have you achieved in the pilot?

At Britannia Education Trust the pupils have been able to be far more creative and adaptive with their coding; having the physical devices has added to the excitement and their understanding of the purpose of code.

What positive benefits has Picoh brought to the delivery of the computing curriculum at Britannia Village Primary School?

Luke Craig (Technology Lead Practitioner at Britannia Education Trust) explains that pupils are really motivated through their use of the Picohs and how higher order computing principles were tackled as well as the creativity of the pupils being enhanced.

In conversation about the Picoh use at Britannia Village Primary School

Year 5 pupils demonstrate and talk about how they programmed their Picoh to deliver a times table challenge. This is then demonstrated with Bradley (Learning Resource Consultant at LGfL).