Word Processing Skills and Understanding – code-it supported by HIAS, Hampshire Inspection and Advisory Service

Word Processing Skills and Understanding (by Phil Bagge @baggiepr) Main Digital Literacy Planning

Remember if I am teaching at your school and you are stuck for ideas if you email me a copy of your planning and indicate which skills you need to cover I will come up with activity ideas. Please give me a weeks’ notice for this.

KS = Key Skills which are useful in any Microsoft Office product

K S	Skill or Understanding	Skill or Understanding Expanded	Examples and Resource Links	Possible Activities	Possible Activities
	Can type using capitals and lowercase text. Understands how to change the case using caps lock or temporarily change it using shift.	Avoiding capitalising whole word or phrases as in web etiquette this can be seen as shouting		Show pupils how to create capitals you could combine this with highlighting to modify words that need capitals	Although I am a great believer in integrating every area of digital literacy. However these basic key skills are often best first taught over a couple of sessions simply where the teacher demonstrates and then pupils have a short period to try it themselves. Activities need to be very basic and accessible for pupils in a few minutes. Be prepared to revisit these key skills in subsequent weeks alongside other more advanced skills.
	Understands that symbols on the top of a key can be accessed by holding down shift	If pupils are using laptops then mentioning that the FN button will access other keyboard items		Pupils could add speech marks to text or £ to amounts
	Knows how to delete both ways using the backspace and delete keys and can micro move the cursor using the keyboard arrow keys	Pupils with poor mouse control often need the arrow keys to delete in the right place		Add extra obvious mistakes to a short paragraph of text. Pupils have to remove these.
	Know how to undo and redo	Everyone makes mistakes, being able to restore work to an earlier period is crucial to enjoying using a word-processor	Video	Show pupils how this works at the end of a session so they can use the drop down menu
	Can use save and save as understanding that it is best to save sequential versions of a document so you can go back to previous versions.	Understanding that you can save versions of a document by adding a sequential number to the save such as French trip2. Also that you can type straight over the highlighted text in the save box. I often find that this needs repeating lots of times before all the class understand it. Fortunately you save work most lessons		Give pupils a simple task and every time you shout save they have to save incrementally. Go round and check they are adding a new number every time
	Can highlight text by left clicking and dragging or left clicking to the left of the text which highlights the whole line or double clicking on a word which highlights a single word		Video	A pre-prepared text where pupils are given the task of creating as many text variations in ten minutes. Then draw the class together and point out how difficult this is to read. Reformat the text to follow clear style rules and get them to do the same
	Can make text bold, italic or underline it and know when to use these	Using Bold for titles, subtitles or key words and phrases only. Rarely underline in word-processed documents as it can look like a web link. Italics sometimes used for quotes.
	Can change font type, size of the font & colour of the font and know when to use these	Consistency of style is very important. One font or font family used throughout a single document
	Can align text left, right, centre and justify and know when these are used	Titles and sub titles can be centred but left align is most used for English documents. Might align right in the first column of a table		This is a difficult skill to teach in an integrated manner as pupils don’t create enough writing to use some of these formats in their own work
	Can build a list by using a bullet or numbered points	Understanding that bullet points imply that there is no order to them apart from the top ones being more important. Numbered points imply a logical sequence or priority order.		A great skill to link with instructions writing in literacy.
	Can move a word or sentence by lassoing the text and dragging it to a new position	Quickly editing text is one of the biggest benefits of a word processor over paper	Video	Great skill to use when changing sentence clauses around. Type it once but copy paste and lasso to get three new sentence layouts
	Can move a word or section of text within the document by cutting and pasting	Understanding that copy and pasting within a document is easier if moving over multiple pages. Lassoing and dragging is easier on same page/screen	Video
	Can check spelling and grammar	Understands that red lines underneath words indicate possible spelling mistakes. Knowing that word processors often don’t know how to spell names	Video	This skill is best taught as part of a class project to word process some text for a real curricular purpose alongside other simple skills.
	Can orient the page view and page size and print on different size paper	Landscape or portrait views	Video
	Can indent manually or within a list and know when to use these skills	Understanding that this suits non-fiction writing with sub headings and possibly sub sub headings	Video	Good for factual report writing projects
	Can insert a picture, Word Art or clip-art understanding that in a word-processor text is primary (This is covered in a more detailed way in Desktop Publishing)	This is often done at a much earlier stage but is not the main point of a Word-processor and can detract from its main purpose. If these items are more than just a support to the text then a desktop publishing package is more appropriate.		A single picture that supports text such as a description of a fictitious character with a picture of the character. Choosing the correct programme for a task is an important digital literacy skill.
	Can insert a table and adjust its formatting adding new columns or rows and merging cells	Knowing that if the data is mainly numerical or needs a graph a spread sheet program will be more appropriate.	Video	Choosing the correct programme for a task is an important digital literacy skill.
	Can apply a new style to a document	This could be taught much earlier alongside basic text formatting	Video
	Knows how to bring full menus up if using MS Word	Small arrow on the bottom right corner of many sections
	Can copy and paste from the Internet into MS Word removing web formatting	Knows how to strip web formatting by pasting with the A option	Video	This skill is referenced in Internet Skills & Understanding
	Saving a copy of the document as a pdf file	Understanding that this will create an unalterable document that would publish well on the web	Video	This is a great way to publish work to a blog once copyright and esafety issues have been considered