Turning in to Tills

In our Year 2 IT lessons, we've been exploring how information technology (IT) is all around us and how it makes our lives easier. Today, we focused on how IT can help us when we go shopping.

To really understand how IT works in a shopping setting, we decided to role-play as parts of a shop’s checkout process. Some of us became the customer, and others took on the roles of the scanner, the till operator, and the price finder.

The ‘customer’ had the job of choosing a selection of items to bring to the till. The ‘scanner’ then had to identify each item using the unique barcodes or patterns attached to them. This was a great way for the children to understand how scanners work in real shops! Once the item was scanned, the 'scanner' passed the information to the ‘price finder’, who used a price list to look up the cost of each item.

Finally, the ‘till operator’ was in charge of adding up the prices of all the items to find the total amount the customer had to pay. We quickly realised just how much faster and easier this would be if we used an actual scanner and till, rather than doing everything manually!

This activity showed us how IT makes shopping quicker and more efficient. It also helped the children understand the important role that technology plays in everyday activities. We all agreed that technology, like barcode scanners and tills, certainly saves a lot of time when we're shopping!