I was amazed at how little I knew about the capability of spreadsheets! My first year at Woodmont Academy, the PE teacher emailed me a spreadsheet she had created to calculate and track student grades. I remember trying to figure out how to change formulas to suit my needs and doing some things by calculator. I wish I had taken the time to find and use the tools! Our Power Grade system shows me a spreadsheet like grade book that averages student grades. This is a feature that I must turn on withing the system. Right now, we run on 4 quarters with all work weighted equally and each quarter counting as 25% of the student's final grade. All I have to do to change this function is to indicate how much of 100% for the term the assignment or test is worth. I like that if I want to copy this information into an Excel sheet, all I have to do is cut and paste. I use this to let classroom teachers know what outstanding assignments students have and to give them updated progress report information. It is easier for me, at this point, to have the classroom teacher stay on top of the students for missing work! I have used and taught Excel to 2nd and 3rd graders as a way to input simple data (counting skittles) and creating a chart to display that data. The specials schedule and technology inventory was also done using an Excel spreadsheet this year. I have also used spreadsheets to create phone lists.
The students in our elementary school have not had much training with spreadsheets, which I hope to change. They have used this format to collect survey information, data for certain math and science projects, classroom library and video inventories and for making charts and graphs. I love the idea of using the spreadsheet design to have students create budgets. The fifth grade just talked about opening a school store and Excel would be a great resource for me to show them.
I would like to try to use a spreadsheet for my lesson plan template and to create game boards and crossword puzzles. I do have a great online template for puzzles, but Excel is a fun option for myself and students to use. Teaching the students to use it has become easier as they understand how to look for things in the toolbar and just play around! I am sure more ideas on how to use this software will present themselves as my classes go along.
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I use PowerSchool too, and it will export many of the reports to excel so that you can edit them. I like to see that you are teaching 2nd and 3rd grader to make charts in excel. As a former science teacher and current math teacher I have found that many students really struggle with making scatter plots and graphs of data.
ReplyDeleteGail, games would be a fun way to learn the use of spread sheet software. It really would be easy to create a math game for elementary students.
ReplyDeleteI also like your idea for using spread sheets for budgeting. A number of my students participate in classes which include time in the school store. Being visually impaired or blind can impact your ability to effectively perform certain job tasks in such an environment. However, a job which involves using Excel to track finances and inventory would be very doable.
The school store is a great idea for a spreadsheet!!
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