How to Teach PowerPoint to Elementary Students

By Emmanuelle Douglas

i Jack Hollingsworth/Photodisc/Getty Images

Teaching PowerPoint to elementary students provides them with a skill set to display their ideas in an outline form when they give reports and presentations in school. This can be used for book reports, science fairs, class presentations, and speeches. Teaching the PowerPoint concepts in a simple and concise way enables the kids to retain the learned skills and apply them to a later project.

Step 1

Open PowerPoint 2010 and explain how PowerPoint is used to display a slide show to an audience. Examples of a presentation would include a book report, a science fair presentation, or a report on your summer vacation. To show them an existing presentation, click the "File" tab, select "Open," browse to locate the file, select it, and press the "Open" button.

Step 2

Show them the presentation by clicking the F5 key. Explain to them how F5 help you run the presentation in a full screen show. Show that they can navigate from slide to slide by using the mouse clicks to advance to the next slide. Stop the presentation by clicking the "ESC" key on the keyboard, and close the presentation by clicking the "File" tab and selecting "Close."

Step 3

Show them how to create a new slide by clicking the "Home" tab and selecting "New Slide." Click in the text box on the new slide and type the name of your presentation; for example, if you are doing a book report on Harry Potter, type "Harry Potter Book Report" in the text box. Show them that changes will remain after you click to different areas in the slide.

Step 4

Add an image to the slide presentation by clicking the "Insert" tab and selecting "Picture." Browse your computer for the image you want to use. Click the image and the "Open" button to make the image appear on the slide.

Step 5

Add another slide by clicking the "Home" tab and selecting "New Slide." Click the "Layout" button to select a layout. Explain to the students that you would use an outline layout to summarize your major topics in this portion of the presentation, but additional slides should be in a layout that fits each individual topic.

Step 6

Show them how to save their changes. Click the "File" tab and select "Save As." Type a file name for the presentation. Explain the importance of knowing how to save and why you need to know where the file is saved.

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