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Changing the screen to suit different pupils

Font: This depends on what you prefer, Arial, Comic Sans SF, Tahoma, Sassoon Primary Infant, Lucida Sans or Times New Roman

Font Size: Generally we use 12, but 14 will make it just that bit bigger

Font Colour: You can change the font colour (format, font, font colour)

Background colour:  usually white with dark font, but some prefer blue background with white text.  Page Layout, Page Background section of the toolbar, page colour and down arrow to open the range of colours.   By moving over the colours you will see a preview of what the document will look like.

Line spacing: CENMAC recommends using at least 1.5 line spacing but it can be 2.  This means that if the pupil writes only a few lines, at least it looks quite a lot of writing. If you want you can save the settings as a template so that you do not need to change anything before the pupil can start work.

Spell check   – Press F7 to move through the spelling errors (spelling errors have a red wiggly line below them; grammatical errors have a green wiggly line).  If there is a word the pupil always spells incorrectly and shows no signs of learning the pattern, it can be set-up to correct it using autocorrect. 

Quick Parts – Highlight the text that you write many times such as your name and then highlight the text. Insert and then in the Text box select Quick Parts Save selection to Quick Part gallery.  In the top line, where your text is, you can clear this and enter the code you need to use as in Trish Davidson, the code could be td and to enter this into the document enter td followed by F3. 

If a pupil accidentally has Caps lock on and does not look at the screen, AND YOU FIND THIS EXAMPLE, highlight text, select button in the font area Aaˇ

Teach the pupil to use the keyboard shortcuts for the more widely used commands. There is another sheet on the CENMAC website on Keyboard shortcuts that you may find useful.   

Use the Customize Quick Access Toolbar at the top of the window to add the most used commands. 

Help the pupil by encouraging them to set out the document with the correct formatting.  This is important, as there is no point in having a fantastic piece of work that cannot be read as it is set out so badly.