1. What your students should know first:
- Review how to operate the Excel Formatting Palette. Just like in Word, in Excel you can change font style and size, make text bold, italic or underlined, align text to the left, center and right, and you can put borders around the text and numbers.
2. Present the "tasty" problem to your class:
- Imagine you run a pizza business, and you want to find out what pizza toppings your customers like the best.
- Generate a list of toppings and write them on the whiteboard. Make sure the list is very messy.
- Take a poll of the students to find out which toppings they like the best. Write the results on the whiteboard.
- Have the students look at the board and ask them if this is the best way to display this information.
3. Conduct a learning probe:
- What do you think might be a better choice for organizing the pizza topping data?
4. Present MS Excel to your class:
- What is Excel? Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that can be used for storing, organizing and controlling data. With the projector on, open Excel and display the interface on the screen.
5. Explain new Excel vocabulary to your class:
- Spreadsheet: the generic term for applications, such as Excel, that you can use to enter, analyze, and calculate data. It performs mathematical calculations and projections based on data entered. Common spreadsheet uses include analysis, charting, and budgeting (Microsoft Corporation Excel Glossary).
- Worksheet: The primary document that you use in Excel to store and work with data. A worksheet consists of cells that are organized into columns and rows (Microsoft Corporation Excel Glossary).
6. Conduct a learning probe:
- Excel is what kind of application? Spreadsheet (choral response)!
- What is a single page or sheet in an Excel spreadsheet called? Worksheet (choral response)!
7. Explain new Excel vocabulary to your class:
- Cell: the intersection of a row and a column. A cell can contain a label, a numeric value, or a formula. Like a plant cell, a cell in excel is self-contained. You can control everything that happens within the cell.
- Row: rows run horizontally (left to right). Rows are marked with a number. The numbers range from 1 to 65,536.
- Column: columns run vertically (up to down). There are 256 columns in an Excel worksheet.
8. Call students up to your computer to answer these questions:
- Select students to locate a cell by using the name box.
- What are these boxes called? Cells (choral response)!
- Cells that run vertically are in? Columns (choral response)!
- Cells that run horizontally are in? Rows (choral response)!
- All these cells come together to form. A worksheet (choral response)!
- Excel is an application that helps you make? Spreadsheets (choral response)!
9. Gather some pizza topping data:
- As a class organize the pizza topping data.
- Randomly select students to type the data into certain cells.
- Remember the Formatting Palette!
- Randomly select students to click and drag over the data to highlight it, to align it to the center, and to put a border around it.
10. Explain new Excel vocabulary to your class:
- Chart: graphic representations of the data on the worksheet.
11. Creating the chart:
- Click and drag over the data to select all cells that have information in them.
- IMPORTANT – Do not select any blank cells.
- Pull down the Insert menu to Chart.
- Choose the Pie option.
- Click the next button twice to get to Step 3.
- Enter the title “Favorite Pizza”.
- Click finish (Microsoft Corporation Excel Glossary).
12. Conduct learning probes:
Select three students to individually create a chart in front of the class. Go through each step of creating the chart as the class watches.
