Technology Lesson Plans: Excel and PowerPoint

Classrooms are fully embracing technology in early elementary grades. Sighted kindergarten and first grade students might be drawing simple graphs and charts on paper with crayons, but these same students are using Excel spreadsheets to create simple graphs and charts by second and third grade. K5 Computer Lab has free technology lesson plans that start with simple skills and age-appropriate content.  These resources are great for teachers learning to use technology themselves and for teachers who are looking for prepared lesson plans. 

Teacher note: The website has ads. If viewing the website on an Apple device, use the Reader feature to eliminate the ads.

Excel

The Excel Lesson Plan - a Simple Bar Chart teaches students how to create a simple bar chart using Excel. This activity is geared for second and third grade students. To access the additional Excel lesson plans - organized by grade levels/skills - select Excel in the menu located down the left side of the website. There are 31 Excel lesson plans starting with the simple bar chart and progressing to more complex Excel expenses and budgets. 

PowerPoint

The Amazing Animal PowerPoint activity teaches students to create a PowerPoint Presentation about an animal's unique features and adaptations. This activity is geared for Grade 3+. A template is provided along with an example PowerPoint presentation. To access the additional PowerPoint lesson plans, select PowerPoint in the menu located down the left side of the website. There are currently 67 PowerPoint activities/templates covering a wide range of topics and technology skills.

Accessibility

These lesson plans include quick video clips (which unfortunately are visual only); however, the step-by-step written instructions accompany the video clips. The free tutorial downloads are PDFs that screen readers can access. Most images do not have alt tag descriptions. 

• Learn more about using Excel with a screen reader here (includes a video of a student creating an Excel bar chart with JAWS)
• Learn more about making a PowerPoint accessible here.
  • Commands to view a PowerPoint with JAWS
    • Open presentation
    • Disable protected mode by pressing F6 and arrowing down.
    • Press F5 to start presentation.
    • Use space to advance to next slide. 
    • Use arrows to read information on the slide.
• Using PowerPoint with a screen reader (select desired device: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows 10, online)
• Older Youtube video demonstrating how to create a PowerPoint using JAWS commands.