The lesson plan I found is called Tasty Tech Activity with Excel and introduces Excel to elementary and middle school students. Students rank their opinions of menu items from fast food restaurants, put their answers in a spreadsheet, and graph the results. This lesson plan’s main objective is to get younger students familiar with Excel, understanding vocabulary such as cell, column, and row, but it also reviews their understanding of bar graphs. Using the template, the teacher introduces these concepts, showing the students that A2, where teacher’s name is on the spreadsheet, is called a cell meaning column A, row 2. He or she then asks students what their three favorite fast food items are and the teacher types those in the fast food item #1 cell, fast food item #2 cell, and the fast food item # 3 cell. The students rate the three food items as 3 (love it), 2 (okay), or 1 (yucky) and the teacher guides each student on their computer to fill in the information in the appropriate cells. After the information is entered, the teacher guides the students through making a bar graph, or column graph as it is called in Excel. This lesson also develops students’ measurement and processing skills. The website is: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/techlp/techlp004.shtml
The Tasty Tech Activity template is a link on the website under the Materials Needed section.
I think this is a great way to introduce younger students to excel! If student can start using excel at an early age, then they will have it mastered by the time they graduate. The first time I used excel was for our grade book assignment and it was very difficult for me to figure out! If I had been introduced to it earlier in school, then I'm sure it would have been a lot easier for me. So, I definitely think introducing children to these different programs early on is important.
ReplyDeleteI think you picked a great website and activity to help students learn how to use the excel program Jessica. I feel like once you figure out how to use the formulas and features of the excel program you can use it for many activities and it can be very helpful to any student in their education.
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