Ideas for Using Microsoft Word

The Highlighter Tool for Word Identification
Teacher creates a document with a list of sentences or a short story. Students open the document and uses highlighter option to identify different parts of speech, opposites, rhyming words, compound words etc. Have students add their own sentences. See example.

WordArt Spelling Lists
Students use Word Art to type their sentences. See example.

Venn Diagram
Use this template for comparing/contrasting activities.

Round Robin story writing
This is a great shared writing activity which allows two classes to work together to write a story. A class composes the first couple lines in a story. This is typed into Microsoft Word and the teacher emails the story to the partner class. The partner class writes a few more lines to the story and sends it back to the first class. The story can be sent back and forth as many times as needed. Add pictures to the finished story and post it on the Internet.

Compound Words with Clip Art
Rebuses can be a lot of fun with Microsoft Word. Have students copy down a list of compound words and turn them into picture puzzles. Student can use clip art images to create their rebuses. This can be a group project or an individual project. Students can then exchange their rebuses and decipher each others Some examples include: 

+ =

+ =,

o + =

Parts of Speech only better!
Here's a way to practice the parts of speech and word processing all in one.  On a piece of poster board, write a content rich paragraph and place it near the computer. Ask the students to open up the word processor and type the paragraph (keyboarding practice).

Now demonstrate the skill you specify, for example:

• BOLD all of the nouns
• UNDERLINE all of the verbs
• CHANGE THE FONT COLOR of all of the adjectives
• ITALICIZE the main idea