Warm Up activities
Text based activities to reinforce simple keyboard techniques… none of
these should take more than a few minutes at the beginning of the lesson
and ideally should be related to another curriculum area.
There is no reason to insist on the use of correct fingering on the keyboard.
Such a pedantic approach can be very discouraging in the early stages.
However, the use of 2 hands should be encouraged from the beginning to
prevent children from covering the keyboard with their arm as they reach
across. Placing the third fingers on F and J may help – many keyboards have
a raised bump on these keys to help with orientation.
Ask pupils to:
1. Enter the alphabet as quickly as possible – record the
time for comparison with later attempts. Keep a chart of
the results and repeat the activity a couple of times during
a term so that children can track their progress.
2. Enter the alphabet with a space between each letter
3. Enter the alphabet in upper and lower case alternately
using the SHIFT key… NOT Caps Lock. aBcDeFgH…
4. Enter the alphabet as a column preceded by the number
of the letter i.e. 1a
2b…
26x
Follow up with a little mental algebra... e.g. “Add an A to a
C and what letter will you get?”
5. Ask the children to enter their own name (with correct
use of upper and lower case) 3 times and save the file. You
can use this file a number of times as follows…
a) Reload the file and change each name to a different
colour
Jane Finch Edited September 2006
b) Reload the file and change each to a different font
c) Reload the file and change each to increasing sizes i.e.
small, medium, and large.
d) Reload the file and change the size of the first letter
on each line to imitate a manuscript style e.g. Jane (You
may want to tell the pupils which font to use for the
capital to get the desired effect.)
6. Ask the children to enter their name once and copy and
paste it 6 times down the page. Change each line to a
different colour of the rainbow.
7. Ask the children to enter their first name only and
experiment to see how large the text can be made before it
splits the word onto more than one line. Compare different
names and sizes around the class. Use your surname and ask
the children to guess the largest size they think will fit.
8. Ask the children to change the text sizes on a prepared
file containing the words: large, big, enormous, medium,
small, tiny, little, etc… so that the size reflects the meaning
of the word.
9. Ask the children to change the text sizes on a prepared
file containing the words: elephant, horse, dog, cat,
mouse, ant, etc… so that the size is appropriate to the
relative size of the animal.
Cut and paste the names in order of size from largest to
smallest.
10. Ask the children to change the colours of ‘colour words’
appropriately in a prepared file.
Jane Finch Edited September 2006
11. Ask the children to change the colour of words such as
sun, sky, cloud, grass, daffodil, bluebell, brick, to an
appropriate colour
12. Ask the children to type as many words as possible
using a current letter pattern from their Literacy work. If
they are spelled incorrectly the spell checker will indicate
this – a good way of illustrating to the children how helpful a
spell checker can be!
13. Ask the children to type as many number bonds as they
can for the same answer. This type of activity is selfdifferentiating!
14. Ask the children to use the numbers 2,4,6 and 8 to
make a list of as many number bonds as possible.
(Remember lists require the use of the ENTER to begin a
new line.)
15. Ask the children to type the numbers 1 to 10 and make
even numbers one colour and odd numbers another.
16. Ask the children to add graphics from a clipart file to
match a prepared list of topic related words.
17. Ask the children to type words beginning with the same
letter along side a provided list e.g.
Animal
cow
Flower
crocus
NB… Use the TAB
Colour
cream
key to ensure that
the second column is
Fruit
cherry
lined up properly…
Town
Cardiff
NOT the Space Bar!
Tree
chestnut
Jane Finch Edited September 2006
18. Ask the children to re-order a list that has been
incorrectly entered by cutting and pasting words into the
correct place e.g. correctly order months or days, make a
random list of pupils’ names alphabetically correct.
19. Ask the children to correct a misspelled set of words
from a current topic (by moving the cursor with the mouse
and using DELETE to delete to the right and BACKSPACE to
delete to the left) and enter the correct letter(s).
20. Ask the children to correct a prepared set of words
that have all or some of the vowels missed out.
21. Ask the children to correct a set of words with a
particular vowel left out (S or T usually works quite well.)
22. Ask the children to:
a) italicise all the nouns in a provided text file
(ideally this should be an extract from a current
text)
b) embolden all the verbs in the same text file
23. Ask the children to change the colour of the words
spoken by different speakers in a piece of text including
direct speech.
24. Ask the children to punctuate a piece of prepared text,
i.e. leave out all the full stops or speech marks when you
prepare the file.
25. Ask the children to make as many words can as they
can from the just the top (middle, bottom) row of letters
on the keyboard
Score according to number of letters in each word.
Jane Finch Edited September 2006