PowerPoint Lesson 1 - Grade 3 Every now and then a technology tool comes along that is a great fit for dispensing information. Students have told me that they have spent huge amounts of time in preparing presentation for their peers in comparison to time spent on other projects. This type of instruction allows you to sneak in a variety of information and skills while your students have fun working on a project in which they are passionate. In the beginning keep it simple As a rule I generally introduce PowerPoint to students in grade three. I ask them to check out a book that they would like to use for a report. Over a period of time they will create an eight-slide slow. 1. Go to the menu in the lower left-hand corner of your computer screen. 2. If you Pinned PowerPoint to the Start menu you can launch the application from there. If you did not pin PowerPoint, go to All Programs/Microsoft Office/PowerPoint. Last updated 7/16/09
PowerPoint will open in default style. While there are many options for changing the look and feel of the slide now is not the time to distract your students with unnecessary details. Remember, our goal is to keep it simple and have our students focus on retelling a story or an event. You will notice the three arrows on the picture above. These arrows show a disk icon for saving, a New Slide Icon, used to add a new slide to the presentation, and the notes area, where the presenter types word-for-word exactly what he/she will be saying to the audience. Page 2
Are you ready? Let s build our first slide. It s all about the script What I mean by this is, you need to complete the writing portion of the slide first (the Click to add notes section). Since this is a beginning lesson we are going to break a major rule which states you do not read to your audience what is projected. This is an exception. To finish this slide we will add the book title in the Click to add title section and the authors in the Click to add subtitle section. After completing a slide always click the Save icon (students will be saving to Page 3
their Home drive so they could work on their presentation from any PC computer in the building). This is what slide one will look like when it is complete. To view this slide in the format the audience will see click the Slide Show icon. Right-click your mouse to return to normal mode. TIP - A long time ago classroom teacher Jerry Cesario taught me how to make students feel comfortable giving reports in front of an audience (I can still remember the fear I had as a 5 th grader). He told me he had each student begin practicing the process by giving just the information on slide one. Each student had the information on a card but tried their best to have it memorized. They first walked up to the front of the room. They made eye contact with the entire audience and then delivered the title, Page 4
author(s) and their name. They smiled and returned to their seats. Each time the students finished another slide they had a slightly longer practice session. Jerry s methods were simple yet eloquent. The creation of slide one would probably be the end of your first lesson. Hopefully, in collaborating with the classroom teacher, the students could do the actual practice of delivering slide one in their classroom. Slide two put on your artist s hat. Click the new slide icon. Slide two requires the student to paint a picture with words. In this slide they will be describing the scene, where the story takes place, with words. Remember, as this is a beginning lesson, we are not adding pictures or anything fancy. Our only focus is in writing the script to retell a story or event. Page 5
After writing the script the student needs to decide what words they will use to introduce the scene of their story. Teach them the rule of six. No more than six words in a sentence. No more than six lines on a slide. After saving this slide the student need time to practice the delivery of both slides. Slide 3 A brief overview of the book. Click the new slide icon. On slide three the students will write a bit more as they tell a short version of the story to their audience. This slide will probably take the whole library session and some classroom time too. It will be most successful if the writing is a collaborative effort between the teacher/librarian and the classroom teacher. Page 6
Slide 4 Why I liked or why I chose this book. Click the new slide icon. The final step: While we will make every effort to GO GREEN each student will need a printout of their presentation for both practice and delivery. Follow the steps below to teach the students (and teachers) how to print slides in Go to the Office Button located in the upper left-hand corner. Pull down to Print and slide over to Print. If you were to print without making any changes you would get four pages each with the slide presentation only. This is NOT what we want. Page 7
This is the default print dialog box. We are going to make two changes BEFORE selecting the OK button. In the Print what: pull down menu select Notes Pages. In the Color/grayscale: pull down menu select Grayscale. Then, click the OK button or press the Enter key. Page 8
As a former classroom teacher, my expectation was that each student would practice reading their script out loud until they felt they were ready to present to the class. I often invited parents, other teachers, and the principal to our presentations. Learning should be a celebration. Children need our recognition and the applause of their classmates. While I recommend this lesson as an introduction to PowerPoint presentations at the third grade level know that many teachers have successfully used PowerPoint with younger students or included more of the sophisticated techniques available in this program. My goal will be to add additional features to each lesson and level keeping in mind the short time you have with each class. You will make a difference. This concludes the first lesson in PowerPoint. Page 9