Direct Instruction - Word skills

Today's lesson had two goals:

1. Students wrote a survey to ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career.
2. Skills focus: Word formatting, numbering, indents, and styles.

Using the career questionaire as the topic, I asked students to brainstorm and write questions they could ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career. I used this lesson to teach some specific skills in Word:

• How to write their name of the paper: View / header and footer / type name and assignment name
• Quickly review keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+S=save, Ctrl+Z=Undo, Ctrl+B=Bold
• Using the "gutter" to select one line or a paragraph
• Identifying the indent markers when you choose number formatting
• Purpose of styles, how to apply and modify them.
• Using line spacing for questionaire.

I ran out of time. On Monday I will follow up with customizing numbering styles and how to use the indent markers.

Since this format of teaching Word skills is new to me I feel that I need to make sure the students have reference information to refer to when I introduce a new concept. I have decided to add a page to our Career wiki for specific skills (ie: definitions, how to's) and add additional resources for more assistance. I will direct student to the wiki when I introduce a skill and I will base future vocabulary quizzes on this material @ http://p6compapps.wikispaces.com/Word