Mail Merge

Today students finished their mail merge letters. Students had the choice to write a letter in support or against Oregon House Bill 2650 - the removal of junk food in public schools -or- a letter about reducing lunch waste and incorporating a lunch recycling program at schools.

After conducting our own analysis of our school lunches and researching these two topics, students wrote their 1st drafts. Working in partners, the drafts were edited using "track changes" and finalized. Students looked up addresses for Oregon Senate leaders and editors of local newspapers. These addresses were inputed on a Google shared spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was exported for anyone to use.

I demonstrated the format of a full-block business letter. Students began the steps of the mail merge and added the appropriate "fields" in the letter. Using the mail merge helper allowed students to preview their letters before merging. The final letters were printed, signed, envelopes were addressed and mailed.

My goal in doing the letter campaign was to give students an authentic reason for learning how to write a formal business letter and to learn the steps of a mail merge letter. One student summed up his feelings, "I don't know if my letter will make any difference but at least they know how us teenagers feel".

Podcasting fun!

Today was the first time in class that my students tried podcasting. Students had a choice of whether to write a mail-merge letter or create a podcast to share their views on Oregon House Bill 2650 (eliminating junk food from schools) or the topic of lunch waste. Three different groups chose podcasting - and after the looks and giggles today - I am sure a few of the other groups wished they had chosen to record their opinions too.

The podcast/mail-merge assignment is the final activity in the What's for Lunch? curriculum unit. Originally the students took photos of lunches for one week and analyzed the nutrition content, cost and waste using an Excel spreadhseet. Next, the students created a desktop publishing poster that was hung in the cafeteria and classroom. This final assignment is to have the students share their knowledge with people outside the classroom.

Students used Audacity to record their podcasts. Many times I observed them rerecording sections to make it just right. All of the groups imported short audio segments for the intro music to the podcast. All three groups were completely engaged during the class sessions and were having fun too!

Desktop Publishing

Goal: To create a one page poster to educate or influence student’s decisions or attitudes towards lunch nutrition, cost effectiveness, or reducing lunch waste.

Skills:Use 8 of the following desktop publishing features on your poster

• Page Border
• Word Art
• Auto Shapes
• Text Boxes
• Diagram / Organizational Chart
• Insert Clip Art & Edit Picture
• Line/Arrow options
• Shadow
• 3-D
• Font Effects
• Fill Color / Effects
• Align / Rotate / Flip

Message:
Look at your Lunch data. Pick one area that you feel that you could educate or influence others. For example, make a poster encouraging students to make healthy food choices, or suggest bringing a lunch from home to reduce lunch waste.

Observation:

• I created a one-page reference page that showed students how to customize each of the skills listed above.
• Students used the reference page often to learn make the poster.
• There was a lot of interaction between the students about how they were customizing the features for their poster.
  
• All 18 students completed the activity.
• The posters were hung up around the school.

Excel Formula Quiz & Assessment

Last Thursday the class took a quiz to check for comprehension of Excel vocabulary words and understanding of how to write an Excel formula. Out of 18 students - 2 students completely bombed the test and 3 others made some critical mistakes - but the other 13 did fine.

I decided to have one-on-one conferences to go over the quizzes and their last Excel project with each student. This is giving me the opportunity to re-teach some skills and check for understanding. The two students who bombed the test will retake it tommorrow. With the others I can point out what they are doing right and also how to correct mistakes.

My students scored "giving feedback" lowest on my teacher evaluation and I am making steps to correct this and make sure that learning and understanding are the focus of my classes - not grades.

QUIZ	% passed greater 70%	% failed less 70%	Class Average
Section One: Excel vocabulary terms	83.3%	16.6%	85%
Section Two: Writing formulas	50%	50%	62%
Total			77%

After the quiz I held individual conferences with the student to review the material. I collected these comments from the students during the conferences:

• I mixed up the definitions of a formula and function.
• I knew how to write the formula; I just wasn’t sure which cell references to use.
• I don’t have any difficulty with basic functions.
• Since the summary was separate from the data, I found it challenging to write the formulas.
• I can get the formula to work on the computer with the help of the Insert Function button; I just have a harder time writing them out during a quiz.
• The AutoSum functions make it easy to calculate totals and averages.
• I chose the correct numbers for the formula – I just missed some of the punctuation on the formula and that wouldn’t happen if I was using the computer.
• I didn’t study the vocabulary before the test.

Student Pre-Evaluation / Teacher Post - Evaluation

Students were asked to self-evaluate their spreadsheet for Excel Assignment #1 using the following rubric. Students had an opportunity to make correction to their assignment after evaluating their work.

Please rate your SPREADSHEET for the following items:	Student Pre-Evaluation
	Poor	OK	Good	Very Good	Excellent
There is a clear title that is centered across columns	0%	0%	10%	20%	70%
Labels are formatted in a way to make them noticeable	0%	10%	0%	20%	70%
Basic Formulas (sum, average) are calculated correctly	0%	0%	10%	0%	80%
Advanced Formulas (countif, sumif) are calculated correctly	0%	0%	10%	10%	70%
Spreadsheet is formatted in an attractive manner.	0%	0%	0%	40%	60%

Please rate your SPREADSHEET for the following items:	Teacher Post-Evaluation
	Poor	OK	Good	Very Good	Excellent
There is a clear title that is centered across columns	0%	0%	0%	0.5%	94%
Labels are formatted in a way to make them noticeable	0%	0%	0%	33%	67%
Basic Formulas (sum, average) are calculated correctly	0%	0.5%	0.5%	0.5%	83%
Advanced Formulas (countif, sumif) are calculated correctly	0%	0%	0%	0%	100%
Spreadsheet is formatted in an attractive manner.	0%	0%	0%	0.5%	94%

Students were asked to self-evaluate their chart for Excel Assignment #1 using the following rubric. Students had an opportunity to make correction to their assignment after evaluating their work.

Please rate your CHART for the following items:	Student Pre-Evaluation
	Poor	OK	Good	Very Good	Excellent
Chart has clear & specific title	0%	0%	10%	20%	70%
The chart type is appropriate for the data	0%	0%	0%	40%	60%
All appropriate data is included on the chart	0%	0%	10%	20%	70%
The chart contains labels or includes a legend	0%	0%	10%	20%	80%
The chart is formatted in an attractive manner.	0%	0%	10%	20%	70%

Please rate your CHART for the following items:	Teacher Post-Evaluation
	Poor	OK	Good	Very Good	Excellent
Chart has clear & specific title	0%	0%	0.5%	72%	22%
The chart type is appropriate for the data	0%	0%	0%	0%	100%
All appropriate data is included on the chart	0%	0%	0.5%	0.5%	89%
The chart contains labels or includes a legend	0%	0%	0%	22%	78%
The chart is formatted in an attractive manner.	0%	0%	0%	0%	100%

Observing independent workers

This week I have been observing which students can complete an Excel assignment either completely by themselves, with some direction from a friend, or who need extra help from the teacher. Here are the results:

Basic Functions

• Independent skill mastery: 12
• Working towards mastery: 4
  
• Below skill mastery: 2
  

Advanced Functions

• Independent skill mastery: 4
• Working towards mastery: 11
• Below skill mastery: 3

The assignment was to take the data on the Shared Google spreadsheet and analyze by using basic functions (sum and average) to calculate nutrition data (calories, fats, carbs), cost and lunch waste. Then the students needed to analyze the data according by the day of the week with advanced functions (countif, sumif). Finally, they graphed the results from one category.

I was a bit disappointed that some students were still having difficulties with basic functions. I realized one student had missed several days of class and probably is just guessing how to write formulas and the other one sits near the back of the room and I wonder how well they pay attention. Recently I have had to remove headphones from those computers to prevent "tuning out" or watching videos during class work time.