10 Minute Lesson Plans
Teachers who may be great at creating literacy material for the regular classroom are often uncertain how to adapt material for the computer classroom which can combine literacy and computer skills.
Yet much of the material you use on a Wily basis can be easily modified for use in the computer lab. Take an extra ten minutes to modify your classroom material slightly, and you have a second lesson for the computer class. The following lessons are easy to prepare, yet give valuable practice for both computer and literacy skills...
Mousing
Computer component:
This lesson provides valuable practice for students who need to develop
mouse skills.
Literacy component: As well as developing reading/spelling skills for all levels, it can be used to practice capitals and punctuation.
Preparation: Create text with no spaces between the words, using vocabulary or sentences from the student's regular classroom exercises. (The easiest way to do this is to type or import the text and then use the Search/Replace command from your word processor to remove the spaces.)
The text should be saved to disk, or loaded on the computer, so that the instructor can brine up the lesson on-screen, when needed.
This lesson can be used for individual students who need to develop or practice computer skills, or as a whole-class exercise.
In the computer class: Make sure that the student has the lesson on-screen. Demonstrate how to use the mouse to click between words or letters, then press the spacebar. Make sure the students can use the Backspace key.
Also, where available, show the students how to click on the "UNDO" key, in case they delete some letters by mistake.
Tasks: Students will use only the mouse and spacebar to find and separate the words, and the backspace key to erase a space put in the wrong place. As an example:
1. Thislessonwillteachthe stud entshowtousethernouseand thespacebar. 2 . Itw illalso he lpdeve lop readingskills.
Variations
This can be adapted to any reading level. For example, students with low
reading skills could search for words from a vocabulary list, or with a
theme, such as animals:catdogcowpig - as you can see, the list does not
have to be very long. Students with higher level reading skills could be
given sentences which are unfamiliar, or paragraphs with no capitals and
punctuation, which they would have to add. As an example:
Thestudentsinmrslandsclass aregoingonatriponfridaytheywill takethebustoedmontonand visitthe northedmontonmallafterthatthey will...
Instructors can assess the lesson in several ways. You can choose to monitor students as they type, then read out the corrections before the end of class and let students self-correct, or have the students print their text and make corrections outside the computer classroom.
You can also give the students a printed copy of the corrections before the class ends and let them self-correct their work on the computer.
Using the Tab/ Indent keys
Computer component: To teach formatting of sentences/ paragraphs using both TAB and the INDENT function.