Thursday Lesson/December 16th

Many students have been asking how to make letters upper case and how to insert punctuation and how to make the words bigger. Today's lesson was surrounding these topics. Each student had to log in and open Open Office, our word processor. After that, they had to write their name and 5 spelling words they know by heart. We discussed they'd know if they know them by heart if the red squiggly line is there or not.
They immediately saw their name had the squiggly line. I showed them two ways to "fix" the first letter of their name: clicking the mouse after the first letter and hitting delete or highlighting the first letter (trickier as one letter is difficult for them to highlight). Then they learned how to hit the shift and the first letter at the same time. Many kids are always afraid to hold the shift button down. They do it so quickly, like the keys will bite them! I notice this every single year! So, I showed them to hold the shift down and keep their finger on it, then touch their first letter of their name. Success. We talked about how it's much easier to create your uppercase letters as you type. They entered to the next line and we practiced their name with uppercase at the beginning. they got it!
For font changes, I showed them how to highlight the word they wanted to change, then we played around with fonts and sizes. They enjoyed doing this and many were giggling as they used some crazy fonts and made their words huge and then tiny!
Today I was able to teach them the period and the exclamation mark. The period was easy for most after they found the key. I had to go around and show most of them on their keyboard as I wasn't explaining it very well-a visual on the projector would have been nice here. I will consider this for the next punctuation marks. The exclamation mark was more difficult as they had to control the shift as well as the key. I am also teaching them correct hand form on the keyboard and they are making a conscious effort to have their first fingers on "J' and "F". It's quite impressive to watch.
While this whole lesson may sound so simplistic, it's another step in the digital writing process for young learners. At first I wasn't sure it would be OK to combine the all these components into one lesson, but it worked out well and I saw quickly that we'd only be working on periods and exclamation marks. We'll cover the others another day.
My hope is for next week (the 3 day week before vacation) to have the kids write in their writers notebook their thoughts for their December entry so when we get back in January, it's ready to go.