Clickable Worksheet Recipe

Goal: To use an online MS Word template to create a series of activities that lead your students to different sites on the Internet and give them educational tasks to complete once they get there.

Here are the steps to accomplish that goal.

1. Open the template and save it as a MS Word document. You can do that by clicking on the link Clickable Worksheet Interactive Template (MS Word). Once the template opens, insert a disk, go to File-Save As. Give the file a new name and Save to 3 ½”  Floppy (A:). Click on back. Then  click on the minus sign in the upper right hand corner to minimize. Open My Computer; open A: Drive; open your clickable worksheet file.

Friendly Tip: Take a moment to be sure that you are working in MS Word and not on the Internet.  You should see a blue W in the upper left corner of your screen.  If you’re not sure, close all your windows and go to My Computer on your desktop and open up your floppy disc.  Double click on the MS Word document that you have just made.

2. Find at least three websites on the same topic that are rich with possibilities:  text to read, instructional activities to involve your students, games that will teach them key ideas, interactive features that will invite and engage your students in meaningful ways online.  To save you some time completing this step, on our Clickable Worksheet page we have posted links to a few places to visit online to locate great websites that support your topic:  ETTC’s Greatest Hits, Yahooligans, KidsClick, Google.

It’s up to you to decide which websites to use and what tasks the children will complete online. You will definitely need to have the exact “address” of each website to make a Clickable Worksheet. One strategy is to bookmark the websites you like as “Favorites” so that you can easily find them again. Or consider printing out hard copy of the webpages, since the Internet addresses show up on the bottom of the pages that come out of your printer.

3. Create specific tasks you want the students to do once they point and click and visit the particular websites you’ve selected for them. Use the prompt words (read…look for…choose…create…write down, etc.) to help you fill in the boxes of your Clickable Worksheet. But why not start this process by typing in the subject of your Clickable Worksheet at the top of the template page?  Check out our sample Dinosaur Clickable Worksheet for some ideas.

Another Friendly Tip: Be sure to SAVE YOUR WORK every few minutes as you move through this process.

4. Turn text into hyperlinks. Decide which words or phrase in your task will become the “hot spot” where students click to go to that website. Select the text by clicking and dragging across it to highlight it. Go to Insert-Hyperlink (or right click and select Hyperlink). The text you selected will appear in the “text to display” window. Go to the address window and type in the address of the webpage. If the page you want to link to is open, you can copy the address and the use the keystroke ctrl + v to paste the address in the address window. Click OK.  Repeat this step until there is at least one hyperlink in each of the nine boxes in the table.

5. Let’s add some graphics. There are four text boxes on the Clickable Worksheet where you can add clip art images to make your Clickable Worksheet more visually appealing to your students. Here’s how:

Click in a textbox. Delete the text. Go to Insert-Picture-From Clip Art.  Search for an appropriate image and right click to insert.  The clip art picture will appear in the textbox.  Repeat that process to fill up the remaining three text boxes with clip art images. Hint: if you would like to remove the border around the picture, select the black line that is the border of the original text box. On the drawing tool bar, select the paint brush and click on “no line”.  If necessary, activate the toolbar as follows: View-Toolbars-Drawing.

A picture can also be a hyperlink. Right click on the picture. Select hyperlink then enter or copy and paste the address in the address window.

6. Let’s get colorful. You can add color to the boxes/cells of your Clickable Worksheet. Right click in a cell, select Borders and Shading. Click on Shading tab. Go to the “Apply To:” window and select Cell. Then select a color. You can access additional colors by clicking on the “More Colors” button.

Once the Clickable Worksheet boxes are filled with tasks and hyperlinks and some graphics, here are choices for what to do next with your Clickable Worksheet:

·        Load the Clickable Worksheet onto multiple computers in your classroom, or in a computer lab. Or save to your folder on a network drive in your building.

·        File-Save As (choose webpage) and work with a building or district technology person to transform and post your MS Word document online as an Internet webpage.