Submitted by Fiona Beal

Often, after a holiday break, teachers want to get their students writing about their holiday. A really fun way to do this is to get them to write their report back in Microsoft Word using a selected template.

I discovered a great template for this in the fabulous Oakdome site.The template is in the form of a cell phone! I tried this out on a Grade 4 class and they loved the experience!

The writing task

“Describe, in around 200 words or less, one or two events from your summer holiday. You’ll do this as though it is a phone message, so although your report back has a beginning, a middle and an end you won’t use paragraphs. Add an image related to your story.”

We had a short oral session first about the holiday break and then we went to our computers to write in the Microsoft Word template. Two examples of the writing can be seen below.

It would be great if one could also insert  a voice recording of the learner reading their work into the document. I looked around Word 2013 but didn’t see any way one do this. 

Word processing is an essential tool for any individual in today’s digital age and offline activities like these are a great way to start with young learners.  For more lessons on how to use Microsoft in the classroom visit the Microsoft Educator Community  at:  https://education.microsoft.com/  and go to the Lessons page where you can search thousands of lesson plans created by educators for educators to help enhance teaching and learning.