Class Four Spreadsheets

Summer 2004

This term our year 5 & 6 students are investigating spreadsheets.

Handling Numbers

A spreadsheet consists of a grid of 'cells' which can be referenced using the letters across the top and the numbers down the side:

When you click into a cell you can type text into a field above the grid. You can type words, a number, or a sum, using values in other cells (a formula).

If you type '13' into cell A1, and '5' into cell A2, then click into cell A3 and type =A1+A2 and click the green 'tick' (or press return), the value '18' will appear in cell A3:

A calculator can be useful when adding together a list of numbers, but if any of the numbers in the list change, you have to do the whole sum again. In a spreadsheet, all the forumulae are 'live' - if any of the cells mentioned in the sum change, the answer changes too:

Treasure Island Map

Pieces of Eight

Using a 'Treasure Island' worksheet we worked out the sums (amounts of treasure) by hand and/or with a calculator.

We then opened the spreadsheet in Excel and used it to calculate the answers by simply adding an '=' sign before each formula.

We also found two ways to create a 'Grand Total':

• add all the values: =G19+G20+G21+...+G28
• or use the SUM function: =SUM(G19:G28)

View full size

Download treasure_island.xls 64k

Time and tide

We then had to work out the amounts of treasure when the pirates returned ten years later:

• in the 'sea' squares, half the treasure had washed away, so all values should be halved.
• many ships had been wrecked near the lighthouse, so the values in the five 'lighthouse' squares be multiplied by three.

Again, this proved laborious by hand, but was relatively straightforward using the spreadsheet:

1. click a sea square (eg B3)
2. change from a number (30)
3. to a formula (=30/2).

As each sea & lighthouse square was changed the answers changed too, including the 'Grand Total'.

Heavy metal

Entering data into a spreadsheet from text description - Download recycling.xsl (instructions included)

You are what you eat!

Analysing nutritional information from food packets to compare fattiness - Download nutrition_calculator.xls

For bonus points, create a graph to visually compare the nutritional information from the three packs:

Related pages: Spreadsheets

Category: ICT, Maths

Author: Mr Kershaw