How to Teach Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is one of the most popular word processing programs on computers today. Most computers in school computer labs use Microsoft Office, which contains Microsoft Word. The easiest way to teach this program is in a computer lab that either has a Smart Board or a computer hooked up to a large monitor or mounted television. If you have only a few computers, you can teach Microsoft Word to your students in small groups and by working with them to learn how to type, print, and save a document. If you teach high school students, you might teach them about some of the other features of Microsoft Word such as building a table or creating a mailing list. Microsoft Word is easy to use, and many of your students will have used it at home before they get to your computer lab or classroom.

Show students how to open a new document. Depending on the version you are using, you will most likely open a drop down-menu, and select NEW or NEW Document. Once students have the document open, show them how to choose the type and size of the font they want to use.

Show students how to make sure the margins and spacing are correct on their document. Point out the top of the Microsoft Word page, where several different options available. When they want to check margins and set the spacing to single or double, they need to look in the Page Layout or Paragraph menu. Again, it will depend on which version of Microsoft Word your school uses.

Type a document. While you are typing a sample document, your students can also type one on their computers.

Save the document. This is a very important skill to teach your students. Students need to learn to save the document to the hard drive and to back it up on a flash drive. Microsoft Word allows you to create different folders to store your documents. On the Smart Board or your display computer, show your students how to create a new folder and give it a title once you have chosen SAVE AS. Type the title of the document you just typed and save it in the new folder you just created. Then give your students a chance to practice this as you walk around the room and observe. You will also want to show your students how to save their document to a flash drive. This is a good time to talk to students about backing up their work.

Close the document and exit Microsoft Word. Show students what will happen if they try to exit the program or close the document without saving it first. The word processing program will prompt students as to whether or not they want to save the changes to their new document.