Teaching with Microsoft Word

Hi everyone,
This week I decided to share with you some kind of information about our most frequently  used “Microsoft Word” .
Microsoft Word is one of the most commonly used word processing tools by teachers.
Word provides a writing instructor with a wide range of ways to integrate word processing into the classroom. Here is  a list of some of the most popular options:
Option 1: Developing Close Reading Skills
Students can work individually or in groups, responding to guided questions about readings, or they
can use the formatting and highlighting features of Word to visually ‘mark-up’ a passage. By taking a passage out of context, students can be forced to look much closer at the rhetorical “clues” provided in the text.
Option 2: Using Microsoft’s “Insert Picture” Feature to Stimulate Discussion and Teach Verbal/Visual Literacy
Using Word’s “Inserdt Picture” function is an excellent means to encourage close reading as well as to distinguish variations in student initial responses to literary texts is the interpretive pairing of graphic with verbal imagery.
Option 3: Using Microsoft's Comment Tool to Annotate Texts
As much literature can be found online (Amazon.com publishes lengthy excerpts of even the most
recent novels in online advertisements), an excellent means of teaching students to read closely and annotate thoughtfully (not just circle and underline) is to copy and paste a portion of any text (poetry, prose, whatever) into a Microsoft Word read-only document, have students make personal copies of the document in class, annotate the excerpt, and then project students’ annotated texts for discussions of the text, either in the computer classroom or in the seminar room via the laptop.
To do this:
-Highlight the word or phrase in the text.
-Find the Tool Bar at the top of the page and left click on Insert.
-Drop the cursor down to Comment, selecting it.
-Keyboard your comment into the pop-up box that appears, briefly noting the information you researched and why you find it useful.
Option 4: Using Audio to Facilitate Textual Annotation
Although instructors think most readily of using DVD clips in classrooms, not as frequently do we consider audio without the visual—any number of sites online feature audio clips of poetry, short stories, speeches, and novels read by the authors:
In the following exercise, students are asked in the computer classroom to listen to a writer’s oral rendition of their text as the students read the written rendition onscreen, and then respond in writing to their audiovisual reading of authorial voice.
Option 5: Using Word's Readability Tool to Evaluate Texts
Microsoft Word also includes a tool for checking a text’s readability, whether that “readability” concerns a student essay, a critical essay, a wall graffiti note, a blog entry, a presidential address, a short story, a novel, etc.
This tool is therefore enormously useful for checking the stylistic profile of any professional- or lay-authored text, including the fictional styles of characters and personae penned from whatever actual or virtual source.
Option 6: Brainstorming and Free-writing
Brainstorming and free-writing often work best when they are made a regular part of the class routine. Word makes it easy to do this. Some instructors start off every day in the computer classroom with a ten-to-fifteen minute free-write or with an electronic journal response. Alternatively, students could be given time in class to brainstorm before a paper is due. Unlike a handwritten free-write, both the student and the instructor can share the end product. Students can print out a copy or save a copy to disk, and instructors can review the class responses from their offices.
Option 7: Peer Reviews and Self Assessments
Word gives you a number of options for peer-reviews and for student self-assessment. Students can read ‘hard-copies’ of each other’s papers, then write a peer review, assessing the strengths and weakness of the argument. Or they can comment on the paper electronically, making a copy of their partner’s file and inserting comments into the document itself. Word provides a number of features to help make their inserted comments stand out. Students can use the Comment feature or the Highlight feature, described below, or simply place all their comments in bold or in capital letters.
Option 8: Writing Workshops
Word offers a range of powerful tools to help workshop writing, especially when used in conjunction with the overhead projector. Word allows you to highlight text in different colors, track editorial changes made to a document, or move text around in order to try out a variety of organizational or stylistic strategies.
Option 9: Reverse Outlines
Word also provides a range of outlining features that allow students to take a paper and convert it into an outline. An outline can help students to see the organizational structure of their papers in a “bare bones” format. Word also allows you to easily break down a student’s paper paragraph by paragraph and create a reverse outline exercise. This type of reverse outline allows students to visualize their paper’s organization as it is—and as they want it to be.
Option 10: Editing
Although the program has limitations, Word’s grammar and spell-check tools can assist students with the editing process. Moreover, because students can easily change their prose in Word, you can create exercises that allow them to explore a variety of options for word choice, syntax, and source integration.
Option 11: Grading
Students can use Word to develop and modify evaluation rubrics. Creating such rubrics allows students to consider their audience’s expectations, and it gives them an active role in the grading process.
Option 12: Reflection
At the end of an assignment sequence, you can ask create a short reflection exercise that allows students to reflect upon both their essay and the usefulness of activities in the sequence. Students can type their responses into the document and save the file to an evaluation folder.

Hope this information was worth it and helped you.