One Thing After Another

Choose a category of vocabulary your students are studying. Create a folder and name it with that category, for example "Clothing". Create a new document on the desktop. (In Windows, right click on the desktop, choose "New" and then click on Microsoft Word Document.) Rename the document by typing "hat" in the space provided. Continue creating more documents named as articles of clothing, such as scarf, sweater, etc. Repeat this process to cover as many categories as is appropriate for your class.

Place the folders and documents on students' computers. If you do not have computers networked, save the document on a disk. Insert the disk into each of the students' computers, open the disk and drag the document to the place on the computer where you keep your class' materials, for example a folder with your name in Documents and Settings.

• Show students how to enter Windows Explorer and drag a file to a folder. Explain the usefulness of this in organizing their work, and give a possible real life example. For further review at a later date, try to incorporate an actual file management project with their written work.
• Ask students to work in pairs to determine which files go into which folders.
• After deciding, they take turns dragging the appropriate files to their folders.
  

• Create new folders and documents for students, but don't name them. Teach students how to rename folders and documents. Then give them names of three objects and have them rename the documents with these names. Have them rename the folder as the category the objects belong to, and drag them into the folder.
• To add a challenge to the above activity, teach students how to create new folders and documents, and have students make their own categories as either in the main activity or the variation above.
• Teach more advanced students how to right click and name a document. Then have them think of three things that have something in common, name the documents and ask their partners what the three have in common.

E-mail us YOUR ideas or submit a form and we will add them as a Variation.