Fruit, Kids, and Excel

Teachers and students can use Excel for all kinds of things. Whether it be for a science lab, math (graphing of course), or just as a tally for class favorites, excel can help make a lesson more hands on for kids. In my lesson could be teaching my students about making graphs or talking about nutrition or using it as a “getting-to-know-you” tool. The teacher could fill out the chart while it is being projected or they could have the kids find the data and fill it in themselves, then starts an oral discussion for the class to fill out together. As a teacher we can take a simple subject as fruit and make it useful to kids learning about computers and Excel…which I think is pretty cool. My excel book is based on the Classes Favorite Fruits Each student's name is listed and they can choose from Apples Oranges Bananas Mangoes or grapes. The whole class participates and after all the data is collected you can make it into a graph for the kids to see how their numbers corespond to the graph. When they see it in color as a graph numbers become more intriguing and students respond and understand more when it comes to questions.

How Many Calories Is That?

This is an exercise students would use when they are learning about nutrition. In this lesson students need to research their favorite fast food restaurant, then the students will decided what they would eat for a normal meal at this restaurant. They will find the calories for each item they would eat, they could do this for multiple places as well. Excel can total the amount of calories the student would have in that meal alone. This is a great way for students, especially beginners, use Excel and its an interesting way to learn about food and nutrition.

http://www.wmburgweb.com/Resources/Lesson/index.htm

This is not a spreadsheet but this is where I got the idea and it gives more detailed instructions.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

The Microsoft website has a number of resources for educators incorporating software into various lessons. This particular lesson is called "Making Money From Lemons." This is a fun lesson that combines math skills with new technology skills, specifically in Excel. Students must make predictions and calculations, thinking logically about customer behavior and everything that might affect it. I thought this would be a great activity because once you complete the virtual project with the class, you can set up an actual lemonade stand and have the students really connect with what they are learning. There are plenty of ways to expand this lesson into other subject areas as well; students can write stories about their experience with the lemonade stand, use chemistry to figure out the best sugar to lemon ratio, and design posters and flyers that will attract the most customers. I just thought that this lesson was a great example of how to seamlessly incorporate software and technology into the classroom.
This is a not-quite-perfect web version of the spreadsheet that Microsoft provides in the lesson plan.

Generation Gap

This lesson plan involves students using Excel to “design, administer, and analyze a generation gap survey.” This lesson plan is for high school students. This activity allows the students to form a hypothesis and then design a questionnaire to test their hypothesis. After administering the survey, the students will chart their findings in Excel. This can be used as a lesson in History, Language Arts, or even Math. Not only will the students get to experiment with Excel, but Word and PowerPoint as well. I felt that this could be a beneficial activity for older students to help improve their skills with using different Microsoft software and get to ask questions a variety of people. They can use this assignment to look at how our generation differs from those before us. I think that this will be very helpful for the students in many ways.

http://www.microsoft.com/education/gengap.mspx#ETF

Using Excel to Compare!

I found this website, which demonstrates how students can use Excel when comparing information given in Social Studies. The lesson plan is essentially to explore different cultures and make a chart which easily outlines different aspects of these cultures.  This example uses Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman cultures to make a comparison of ancient civilizations.  Transportation, clothing, education, and climate are some of the different aspects this example explores.  The goal is to organize aspects of different civilizations into a table where students can easily see the similarities and differences between cultures.  By the end of the lesson, students will have learned not only more about the civilizations; but they have knowledge of a new manner in which they may organize information and how to do so digitally. 

(I couldn't get the file to upload, but the link takes you to the home page. It's under "Social Studies" and then "Ancient Civilization Graphic Organizer." From there, it allows you to view through PDF or Excel.)

My Spanish class lesson plan is a timeline too. I could use the timeline idea to teach some use of Excel, as well. To do that, I would start the lesson out by having everyone write out the dates they want to put in the timeline, together with any information they want to associate with the dates, in a notebook before they start working with Excel. Then I would have them open a new, blank Excel worksheet, write in a title, put the dates in horizontal cells, put the information in the cells above the dates, then format everything to get angled text, colors, bullet points, arrows, whatever else would make the dates more meaningful and easier to remember.
I chose a timeline because I believe it is a useful tool to give an easy visual aspect to the progress of history, whether through epochs or just through what they did that morning.
I got the instructions for this idea from the Microsoft website, at

http://www.microsoft.com/education/CreateTimeline.aspx

Candy Activity

A lesson plan that I have seen a few teachers use before, especially in younger elementary grades, is using Excel for a candy activity around holidays - like Halloween or Christmas. Every group of students would be given Skittles or M&M's (some type of candy with several different colors). First, students must estimate how many of each color they think they will have. Then, they would count to find the actual number. All of this information can be recorded on a spreadsheet. When finished, teachers could have each group create a graph that shows how many of each color the groups have.

Attached is a download link of a simple example I made: http://www.sendspace.com/file/9t295m