7 Ways Elementary Students Can Benefit From PowerPoint

Written by Mr Mustafa in Teachers' Lounge Last Updated February 6, 2023

Teaching elementary students is an important job you can do in many different ways. Parents and teachers often brainstorm the best ways to teach children in school; one popular method is using PowerPoint. So, what are some ways that PowerPoint can aid young students?

Elementary students benefit from PowerPoint in these 7 ways:

  1. PowerPoint videos are a learning aid.
  2. You can help children learn with PowerPoint images.
  3. Powerpoint allows students and teachers to collaborate.
  4. Students can review lessons on PowerPoint at home.
  5. Teachers can use PowerPoint to organize their information 
  6. PowerPoint provides benefits to children with disabilities
  7. PowerPoint aids students’ creativity.

We all want the best for our kids, and PowerPoint can make learning easier and help your child progress. Teachers can also use PowerPoint to enrich their students’ experience and make classroom learning fun. Please read on to discover some of the best ways that students can benefit from PowerPoint.

1. PowerPoint Videos Are a Learning Aid

One of the best parts about PowerPoint is how you can put more than one thing on a page. Video is one of the most popular items for elementary students to put on a PowerPoint presentation. 

Kids love videos, and teaching with them has numerous benefits for elementary students. It is a widespread opinion that children can learn more when videos are a part of the curriculum. With the digital age upon us, kids are often more receptive to video learning experiences than the old-fashioned teaching methods. 

You can use videos combined with other PowerPoint tools to help develop an understanding of a topic. You can use them for numerous subjects when you are teaching elementary students. Some of the most popular topics to teach with video on PowerPoint include: 

  • Learning a foreign language. 
  • Science lessons. 
  • History.

Another important and valuable aspect of using videos in your PowerPoint presentations is the following:

Suppose you only have an hour to teach a class a science experiment or show them how something grows over time. In that case, you can incorporate a video into your lesson that can use time-lapse or skip ahead so that your students can see the final result of something in much less time. 

Children can also benefit from learning from videos by presenting lessons in a PowerPoint presentation. A video recording means they can access it whenever they want and save the information rather than scrambling to take notes. 

Frankly, it is hard to take notes when listening to someone’s lecture, let alone elementary students. Having videos included in the lessons gives them a chance to pay attention and engage without the pressure of not being able to access them later. 

Students Learn by Seeing Real-Life Situations Unfold 

When you incorporate a video into your social studies lesson, you can add a video that relates to the instance you are trying to explain. Suppose you want to show the importance of communication at home. Including a video that demonstrates positive interaction in a household can be beneficial. 

However, using videos in your PowerPoint presentation can help students benefit by giving them another tool that allows them to learn and understand a subject. It also gives teachers a chance to relax and gather their thoughts which can help them provide better education to their class because they are rested and ready to continue teaching their students after a short break. 

2. You Can Help Children Learn With PowerPoint Images

Learning with images has become increasingly popular, and for a good reason. People interpret images way faster than they do with written language. In fact, “the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text,” according to educator Miriam ReyesOpens in a new tab.. Because we process images so fast, they complement other forms of education through PowerPoint. 

Add some fun images if you are teaching a math lesson on PowerPoint. More and more educators believe using images with math is imperative to getting children to understand it better. Some scholarsOpens in a new tab. even think you should use images with nearly all your math lessons. PowerPoint is an excellent way to use pictures and math lessons simultaneously to benefit your elementary students.   

Images aren’t just useful for math classes. You can use photographs in just about any lesson under the sun. Some of the most common courses for elementary students that you can incorporate pictures with your lessons include: 

  • Social Studies.
  • Reading.
  • Science.
  • Writing.

You can use all different kinds of images for your classes on PowerPoint. You can create your images from graphic design or photographs or use stock images if you have any concerns about copyright infringements. There are numerous free imagesOpens in a new tab. for your use, so choose the ones that work best for your PowerPoint presentation.  

So give this approach a try next time you teach your students various subjects and watch them learn and grow. You’ll see smiles on their faces and hopefully increased engagement when you spruce up your lessons with images that will capture their attention and make learning a little more fun again. 

3. PowerPoint Allows Students and Teachers To Collaborate.

In life, we must always work together with other people. Collaboration is essential to our society, whether at home, at work, or with strangers in an emergency. So it is not surprising that one of the most important things you can teach students at any age, starting with elementary students, is how to collaborate. 

PowerPoint is an excellent method for teaching students how to collaborate with classmates and teachers. 

One of the best qualities of PowerPoint is that you can add to it at any time and share the presentation with others so they can, too. This ability to share with others is an excellent tool for elementary school teachers to use that they can share with their students to contribute to the lesson with their classmates while they are learning. 

Here is a video from Envato Tuts+ on how you can collaborate on PowerPoints: 

Collaboration between teachers and their students can make the lessons more dynamic. Teachers know a lot, but students can sometimes add something the instructor wouldn’t have imagined.

This collaboration is a great way to give your children some independence and make them feel like they are adding something to the conversation. PowerPoint allows children to add their contributions using technology to see how they can make a difference in class.

Collaborating with other students and teachers also allows children to have fun. Add some excitement to your lessons by giving children an opportunity to discuss with each other what they think should be included in their studies or letting them choose an image or video. 

This use of team-building gives students a chance to be creative and have a good time when they are learning. 

Not only is collaborating fun for children but it is proven to make them feel better about themselvesOpens in a new tab..  After a seemingly endless tide of school-related violence, student mental health is starting to get the attention it deserves. It has never been more crucial for educators to foster an environment of comfort and growth in the place of learning.

When students lack proper engagement with their teachers and fellow students, it can lead to feelings of isolation, which is not conducive to mental wellbeing. If students feel excluded from the learning experience, they will often feel low self-esteem and lose interest in their studies. 

When you allow children to collaborate with you, the teacher, and the other kids, you give your elementary students a better chance of having a positive view of themselves. 

4. Students Can Review Lessons on PowerPoint at Home

We all remember the dreaded word from various stages of our education: homework. But in all seriousness, homework is a critical aspect of teaching and learning. While elementary students should not get overwhelmed by homework, it is a good idea to have some assignments each night to keep the information fresh in their heads. 

Not all experts agreeOpens in a new tab., but many think it helps young children practice what they’ve been learning. This process contains several benefits, such as:

  • This ability to personalize lessons. Powerpoint allows teachers to help design a curriculum not just for the classroom but for the home as well. You can make homework fun by adding images and videos to help improve your students’ retention of the information.  
  • The student can share difficult lessons with their parents. This transparency helps the parents better understand what their child is doing each day and allows them to work with their child at home to help improve their learning and recognize any areas of weakness more easily. 
  • Parents can also contribute through Powerpoint. PowerPoint allows parents to discuss issues with the teacher to optimize their child’s educational experience. 
  • PowerPoint is a great way to encourage your students to work together. Even when they aren’t in the classroom, working with others at home will help them develop relationships with classmates and improve their skills in working with other children. Numerous experts agree that collaboration is of the utmost importanceOpens in a new tab. for young children, so having the opportunity to extend this from the classroom to home is a tremendous advantage of PowerPoint.

5. Teachers Can Use PowerPoint To Organize Their Information

One of the most appealing things about PowerPoint is that it allows the educator to design a visually appealing and comprehensive curriculum. It also encourages discussion as you can add numerous tools to help your students think about what they see and ask follow-up questions about the slides. 

There are many ways that teachers can organize their lessons on PowerPoint. It is really up to the instructor and their classroom on what they think is best. However, one of the ways that most people learn better, as discussed earlier, is through visual learning tools. 

Some of the very best ways that you can incorporate visual tools into your lessons to help organize your curriculum and give your students the best chance at learning and retention include: 

  • Graphs and charts.
  • Fill-in-the-blanks questions.
  • Images that allow the student to relate to the subject at hand.

Although using Powerpoint as an educational tool can be extremely helpful, you also need to be sure that you are using it in a way that will benefit your students. If you make things too complicated or do not have a good sense of organization, you may want to avoid using PowerPoint.

Good Organization is essentialOpens in a new tab. for both teachers and their students. Not only will an adequately organized slideshow help the teacher give their best results to their students, but it is also imperative to instill organizational skills in children at a young age.

 A PowerPoint presentation that is neatly organized and follows a deliberate structure is a great way to show your students how to arrange something for their benefit.

Teachers can use PowerPoint to teach their students some helpful organization techniques they can use in the classroom and in their home lives. You can give them examples of some best practices for remembering things and encourage them to practice this daily. 

Some of the ways that you can teach organization through PowerPoint include: 

  • Using checklists that students can mark when they have completed a task.
  • Add a calendar to your PowerPoint slides. 
  • Replacing old slides with new ones when the information is outdated.

6. PowerPoint Provides Benefits to Children With Disabilities

The best part about using PowerPoint in classrooms is that it can reach more students than other traditional learning methods. Not everyone learns the same way, and PowerPoint is an effective way to combine multiple mediums so that students can learn at their own unique pace and in their style. 

There are numerous conditions that students have that can benefit from using PowerPoint. Some of these are:

  • Autism.
  • Hearing impairment.
  • Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Perhaps one of the most encouraging studiesOpens in a new tab. was performed by Heimann, Nelson, Thju, and Gillberg (1995), which showed that autistic students improved their reading and comprehension skills when accessing a computer. 

Furthermore,  it doesn’t just benefit students with autism. There are numerous disabilities ranging from mild to severe that affect children. Many of these children with disabilities learn better when they use PowerPoint.

It is most likely beneficial for children with disabilities to learn with PowerPoint because they have so many different learning styles at their disposal. Whether they are looking at an image or video or reading the words, there are more ways to learn than with a traditional lecture. 

Studies have shown that simply lecturing students of any age is not an effective wayOpens in a new tab. to teach. You need more interaction, and you need variability in the material. The importance of increasing engagement is especially true with younger children and those with disabilities. 

PowerPoint is an effective way to capture elementary students’ attention by letting them interact. You can use numerous tools with PowerPoint to capture the attention of your students with learning disabilities, such as: 

  • Ask Them Questions. You can ask them questions on the PowerPoint screen. Asking them questions helps with hard-of-hearing students, but it also captures the attention of students who have ADD or ADHD and who might have trouble focusing. Breaking up your lesson can help these students pay attention better.   
  • Use Images and Videos. You can capture students’ attention better when you use pictures and videos. Videos are suitable for any student to learn, but they can be even more beneficial to students with autism and other disabilities. You can recreate experiences for these children so they can see what it’s like to attend a demonstration in a crowded area without having to experience that firsthand.

7. Powerpoint Aids Student’s Creativity

Creativity has long been considered something that teachers must encourage their students to practice. Elementary students benefit from creativity in numerous ways. Not only can it help students get joy out of learning, but it also helps their cognitive abilitiesOpens in a new tab. by figuring out how to solve problems in new ways. PowerPoint is a beneficial tool for kids to unleash their creativity in the classroom.

You can have your students do many different PowerPoint activities to help build their imagination and tap into their creative side. Whether you want them to get experience with their pencil skills or posting videos or photos, there are many exciting and varying ways that you can help your elementary students be creative while using PowerPoint. 

Some of the best ways that you can do this include:

  • Have them practice sketching their designs.
  • Have them experiment with shapes and colors.
  • Please encourage them to learn how to post their favorite photos or videos.

Creativity is just another one of the many benefits that your students will get from using PowerPoint. 

Whether they are learning with you in the classroom or practicing creating a slideshow at home with their parents, you can make your students test the limits of their imagination using this tool. Parents, students, and their teachers can work together to let their elementary students have fun learning on PowerPoint. 

Final Thoughts

In this modern era, we must equip students with useful computer skills, and being proefficent with PowerPoint ties in well with this overall goal.

As outlined in this article, PowerPoint is a hugely beneficial learning tool that makes participation engaging and creative. All good teachers should try to incorporate PowerPoint and equivalent digital tools in to lessons and activities.

Sources

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  3. What Elementary Teachers Should (And Should NOT) Wear
  4. Are Elementary Teachers Allowed To Wear Open-Toed Shoes?
  5. Should Elementary Teachers Give Homework? (The Ultimate Guide) 

Mr Mustafa

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