Control Z – undo (Office programs will let you go backwards numerous levels, but some kids’ programs will only undo the last action.)

Control Y – redo (This will undo the “undo”)

Control A – Select All

Control S – Save

Control X – Cut

Control C – Copy

Control V – Paste

Control P – Print

Control drag to duplicate in Word (control D in Powerpoint)

Control + Shift + > to increase size of selected text

Control + Shift + < to decrease size of selected text

Control + E to center text

Control + R to right-align text

Control + L to left-align text

Control N – create new document

Control O – open

Control W – close document but not exit program

Control F – find specific word(s) in the text

Control B – Bold

Control I – Italics

Control U – Underline

Shift F3 – Change case (toggles from lower to upper to title case)

Control End – Go to End of Document

Control Home – Go to Beginning of Document

I hope this saves you some time!

MaxWrite

MaxWrite is the kids’ version of Word. Students can type, add pictures or borders, work with tables, and do almost anything you might normally have them do with a word processor. They can add images of Clifford or Ms. Frizzle, or they can draw their own pictures right within the program. They can also search for images from the regular Word images search. The documents are saved as a Word format, so they can be opened later on any computer that already has Office installed.

MaxShow

This part of Scholastic Keys is the interface to PowerPoint, and it’s probably my favorite to use with kids in the classroom. This is a wonderful program to use as a culminating event for almost any unit or story. We’ve had third graders create slideshows on their favorite animals, second graders create slideshows of their color poems, fourth graders create word problems shows….you get the idea. The possibilities are endless! After the children enter their information and images into their slides, they enjoy exploring other options such as colors, fonts, and animations to truly personalize their shows.

MaxCount

MaxCount is a spreadsheet program similar to Excel. There are several activities already built into MaxCount that can be used with the very young children. Older kids might enjoy creating multiplication tables or entering data and converting it to graphs. They love the “magic” of filling the columns with fomulas so the computer does the math for them! This is a great program for working with any type of data including practice with mean, median, and mode. It’s also excellent for showing various types of graphs using the same data.

There is a handout for Scholastic Keys in the blue box in the sidebar. Just click on the name of the handout and select download. I’ll be happy to come in and help you any time you want to use this awesome software!