Over this half term we be looking at and learning lots about Spreadsheets. Mainly we will be using Google Sheets, BUT for today we will be using Microsoft Excel. Excel and Sheets do similar things. These lessons will be just as useful for other spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets are really useful programs for helping you handle large amounts of data and mean you can make a changes and rather than having to recalculate all the sums the computer does all the work. So they aren’t just useful for school but can be used in the home and by businesses. In fact I use them all the time to help with the After school club letters.
KEY VOCABULARY – TERMINOLOGY
- row
- column
- cell
- formula
Just like anything technical spreadsheets have special words (terminology) that you need to understand to help your use the program fully.
So the cell highlighted in purple is know as …
The computer uses this as a reference, like a house on a street, what is inside may change but the street and house number remain the same.
Using this new knowledge why don’t you try wizards-challenge.
With your new knowledge about cell references you can now use the data. You can input formulas into other cells to create another value. Just like in maths you can use any of the four operations; you can + add, – subtract, / divide, or * multiply! But take care as the symbols are not exactly the same!
The first activity was just a warm up… Now the super challenge of the lesson can you use formulas to turn the bars gold. Using cell references and formulas try the-gold-mine.
At the end of the lesson I give you a Question to think about…
Why is it useful to reference the cell and not just put in the answer?
Year 5 HolbrookPS 