Today, out of nowhere, I was told that due to my school district’s financial crisis and a computer teacher’s retirement, I will start teaching computers to 6th and 7th grade students…on Monday.
I’ve been a Language Arts(English) teacher for 8 years. I have a tech. certification, but it is mostly just…well, I’m not really prepared for teaching it(I got it years ago before becoming employed).
Yep, no notice or time to prepare. The class is computer applications, focused on Microsoft Office(OS X, by the way). Eventually, that is where I’m heading.
I can get to the meat of my class eventually, but I need survival lesson plans.
What I mean is that for next week or two, I need things I can have the kids do, probably using the computers and the internet while I get ready for the real core lessons to come.
Anyone have some stuff? The higher quality of education the better, but I’m desperate here and need some stuff to do in computers class.
Thanks so much. :eek:
I hate busy work and never use it. However, I think anyone can understand how much pressure it is to be flung in front of kids and computers with 3 days notice.
Perhaps some easy research and report kind of activities? Good Web Quests or something?
I’m stressed, clueless, and need some activities that won’t make me look like and idiot in front of a bunch of students. I’m a great teacher, but this is wild.
Why can’t you just use the retired teacher’s lesson plan from last year?
If that’s not an option, I took a computer applications course in grad school a few years ago. The first two classes were focused solely on the history of computers. Have them open Wikipedia and just start reading.
Just went to open house at my 7th grade son’s school, and one class was “Careers and Technology.” Their course description includes:
“This class will be exploring computer basics for beginners and move up to more advanced computer usage by the end of the semester. Students will improve their keyboarding skills, become proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, become effective users of the internet and know the inter-workings (internal components) of the basic desktop computer.”
Resources for the course include:
UltraKey Typing Program
Online Educational Resources:
Discovery Education
TypingGames.com
BrainPop
So maybe you can star tthem off with typing/keyboarding skills (don’t know if that will last for 2 weeks).
Hope this helps!
Because he is not what you would call “organized” and has no written down plans or course flows.
OK, then how about this. In addition to basic keyboarding, how Office tutorials from Microsoft: Microsoft 365 Training
Gold selling spam reported.
Mahaloth - maybe buy one of those Teach Yourself Books and plan the lessons around that for a few weeks?
Hmm…my high school started teaching typing in seventh or eighth grade, so that might be a good starting point. (They tried to teach us in sixth grade using some stupid system that relied on large plastic thingies glued to the D and K keys.)
Does the district have any kind of plan outline in place? If they don’t, tutorials in common programs and tasks (as suggested above) might work. You don’t want to bore the kids, but at the same time you can’t assume they’ve all had access to computers at home.
If/once you get to the internet, spend time teaching about spam, phishing, how to use social media safely, etc. Kids learn “don’t talk to strangers” when they are 4, but seem to forget that the internet is full of strangers! The sooner you get online safety drilled into their heads, the better off they are likely to be in this world of online banking, Facebook and smartphones!
I’d start with keyboarding - that will buy you some time. Then I’d move onto parts of the computer. My son had “tech” last year in sixth grade. They had keyboarding. They had to do a simple Word document. The had to do a simple Powerpoint. They had to crunch some numbers in Excel. They had a few lectures on parts of the computer (what is a USB stick. What is a monitor. Where is the power button.) And INTERNET SAFETY.
Ooh ooh be sure to teach them how many bits are in a byte. Back in 199- when I learned about computers, it was always on the exam!
I guess they don’t teach you GW-BASIC like they used to when I was a guinea pig in grade school computer classes.
I used to have a ton of fun making the computer print something over and over. That and seeing what the most annoying beeps I could get out of the PC speaker was. We also got to play lemonade stand simulators from 5 1/4 floppies.
Good times.
When I was in school, it was always fun to play in the painting/drawing programs. That seemed to be the default time-waster when there was nothing else to do in the computer lab. My Elementry school computer lab also had a bunch of educational games (Number Munchers!) that were always fun.
Hi there,
I am a computer teacher at Alma Middle School in Alma, Michigan. I have taught for almost 20 years now. I would be happy to share what I do with 7th grade students. Let me know if you still need some lessons to get started with. You can email me at bleonard@almaschools.net.