Lessons 6 and 7 Science Fair Word Document Tutorial
Two 1 hour class periods
Instructional Objectives
Students will use the Internet to follow a tutorial on Microsoft Word so that they can begin preparing their science boards for the science fair. They will also learn to "bounce" between two documents using "minimize" and "maximize".
Advanced Preparation/Prerequisite Knowledge
Each child will be at a
different stage in his or her preparation to create the necessary documentation
for the science fair project. Do lesson 4 about half way through the allotted
time for the project and then lesson 5 closer to the end. You will be able to
determine how close the children are to being complete with your bi-weekly
conferences. Every child should, by the assignment half way point, have a
question, hypothesis, materials and procedure for his or her project.
Since this lesson
requires a lot of reading, I have allowed the better readers to go first, then
had them assist those struggling students. I have had the stronger students read
to the struggling ones and help with explanation but have tried to prevent the
stronger ones from doing it for the struggling ones.
Once they have read the information, then I will allow the stronger students to
show the struggling ones if need be.
The teacher should be
familiar with the Internet and the website
http://baycongroup.com/wlesson1.htm as well as Microsoft Word.
Materials
Computers with Internet
access.
At least one color printer.
Science Boards.
Glue sticks, paste, or
Elmer's School Glue.
Procedures
1. Each child will need his or her own computer to use. If you have only a few computers in your room you will have to allow only a certain amount of time per student. A lab is another good alterative.
2. Have the children open Internet Explorer or Netscape.
3. Have them type into the address bar http://baycongroup.com/wlesson1.htm
4. Have students minimize this site by clicking on the small line at the right hand side of the page on the screen.
5. Have students open Microsoft Word
6. Go to the Start Menu.
7. Go to Programs.
8. Go to Microsoft Word.
9. A new blank page should open. If it does not, have the students go to File, new, blank document.
10. Minimize this screen in the same way they minimized the web page.
11. Students will create their question, hypothesis, materials and procedures using Microsoft Word. Since they have already created titles, it is unnecessary for them to include titles in their work now.
12. Since students will be only typing the information the first stop on the tutorial is "Document View". Children tend to want to see the typing very large at the expense of not seeing the whole picture so going here first will allow them to experiment with the different views and find one that allows them to see the whole picture and one that they can be comfortable with. Maximize the tutorial screen and go to "Document View" in Lesson One of the tutorial. Have the children read the information and then "bounce" back to the Word document so they can experiment.
13. Once they have found a good "view" they can choose a font style, color, and size. Go to Back. Go to Fonts in Lesson Four . Have the children read the info on the website and then "bounce" back to their documents to try it out.
14.
Once a font style has been selected go to Back and then to Font size, also in
Lesson Four. Have them follow the same procedure of "bouncing" to choose an
appropriate size. This is when it is important that they
look at the overall page to see how much space they are taking up. They also
need to look at their boards and decide how big is big enough and how small is
too small. This will vary depending on the amount of information they want to
type.
15. Once a size has been selected, they will need to choose from Bold, Underlined or Italicized. Go to Back. Go to "Bold, Underline, and Italicize in Microsoft Word" in Lesson Three. Have the read this and again follow the same procedure of "bouncing" to decide on a type style.
16. The final type choice is color. While there is not a tutorial for this you can have the children follow the same procedure as when they selected a font and size by having them highlight something they typed and choosing a color from the color palette under the "A" on either the formatting tool bar at the top of the screen or the "A" (not the sideways "A") at the bottom of the screen in the Drawing Tool Bar.
17. Now have the students "bounce" back to Lesson Five. Have them read all the information there and "bounce" back to their documents to try it.
18. Finally have them go to Back and then go to Lesson Six. This is an important lesson because it explains the use of help. Have them read through this and again "bounce" between screens trying out the concepts.
19. Once they have completed the lessons, have them begin typing their information.
20 Once the information has been typed, either print it out or go to Save As, and save to disk to be printed later.
Assessment
Your assessment will come in whether or not all students will be able to produce the required documents.
Extensions
Once students understand how to access and use Microsoft Word, I allow them to type any and everything they want.