I have always wanted to ensure that what I deliver in class is useful and has an authentic context. As part of introducing Digital Literacy skills to the students at school, I have identified an area that is a great 'leveler' in terms of ability. The use of spreadsheets as a cross-curricular tool is a great example of taking learning that can be pretty boring and using it in a fun and relevant way. I also feel this could be a great way to give a boost to those students that lack the confidence in some areas of their Mathematics as well as support those students who thrive in this area.
Patterns, Rules, Fill Series, Absolute and Relative Cell Referencing, Functions...
This lesson is what I always start with when introducing working on spreadsheets. My philosophy around most of what I teach is all about 'Working Smart, Not Hard'. There are some fantastic spreadsheet shortcuts that students can find useful so I feel that this is a great thing to do in order to get them started.
As an aside, this lesson actually has a history. It was the first lesson that I taught as a trainee teacher over 20 years ago. I only occurred to me when I went to search for the demo spreadsheet I had made and saved somewhere in my Google Drive as I have copied a version of it from an old hard drive full of old files from teaching as I know at some point, I won't have to reinvent the wheel and make a resource from scratch.
Filling in a spreadsheet is made easier when you know how to use the fill handle.
Days, months and dates are automatically programmed into the software so these values are automatically filled in when you drag down or across. This works for dates and numbers too. However, to count in weeks or other intervals, the students learn that they need the first two values so they can 'teach' the spreadsheet how to count. This is the same rule for numbers. If you drag down or to the right, the values increase and if you drag up or to the left, the numbers decrease. This means negative values can be created easily.
The next stage is demonstrate how the spreadsheet calculates numbers using relative and absolute cell referencing.
Relative
When a formula is entered, the two numbers become 'related'.
If one of these numbers move, the relationship still exists. The example I always use to explain this in class is as follows.
Imagine the number 7 is me and the number 10 is my family in London. No matter where we are on the world, we are always going to be related.
