Computer Skills
Beginner
60 mins
Teacher/Student led
Learning Goals
Learning Outcomes
+80 XP
What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC or iPad/Tablet

Write It Down — Documents That Get You Taken Seriously

Learn to create a professional one-page proposal using heading styles, formatting tools, and spell-check. You'll practise with a sample proposal, then write a real one for your Something Real project that adults will take seriously.

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    1 - Introduction

    Illustration for Introduction

    Welcome

    Today you're going to write a one-page proposal for your Something Real. Not 'business writing', not an essay, a real proposal that an adult (a teacher, a parent, a sponsor, the principal) would actually read and take seriously. By the end of the lesson you'll have a typed, spell-checked, PDF-ready document sitting in your Digital_Portfolio folder, ready to be polished further next week.

    By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

    • Create, save, and export a document from inside your {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} folder
    • Apply heading styles, text formatting, and paragraph formatting on purpose
    • Use spell-check, grammar tools, and find-and-replace to clean up a draft
    • Explain when to send an editable document versus a PDF
    • Write a one-page proposal an adult would take seriously

    Warm-up

    Think of the last piece of writing an adult gave you that you actually took seriously: a permission slip, a printed letter home, a well-made poster in a shop window. What made it feel official? Was it the words themselves, or something about the way it looked on the page? Hold that answer in your head. You're about to build a document that feels the same way.

    👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

    +5 XP

    2 - Key Concepts

    Five ideas do most of the work in this lesson. Skim the table, you'll use every row during the step-by-step.

    ConceptWhy it mattersExample
    Heading style — a preset (Heading 1, Heading 2) applied from the Styles menu, not just bold text at size 18Signals 'this is the title' to any reader and makes the document look official in the first second they see itApplying Heading 1 to 'Proposal: Lunchtime Film Club' so a parent or teacher instantly knows what they're reading
    Formatting: text vs paragraph — text formatting (bold, italic, underline, font, size) applied to individual words; paragraph formatting (alignment, line spacing, indentation) applied to whole paragraphsText formatting pulls the reader's eye to one or two key facts; paragraph formatting decides whether the page feels like a wall of text or something adult readers actually readBolding the date 'Friday 14 March' inside a paragraph, then setting all three paragraphs to 1.15 line spacing so the page breathes
    Spell-check and grammar — red squiggly underlines catch spelling, blue underlines catch grammar; both are fixed from the Review / Tools menu or by right-clickingTypos and grammar slips tell the reader 'I didn't proofread' and undercut your idea before they've read a sentenceYour proposal mentions 'Gaelscoil'. Spell-check may flag it; right-click and add it to your dictionary so it never flags again
    Find and replace — searches the whole document for one word or phrase and swaps it in one clickIf you rename your project halfway through writing, you don't have to re-read every paragraph to catch every mentionRenaming 'bake sale' to 'coffee morning' across a proposal and changing all six mentions in a single click
    .docx vs .pdf — .docx (or a live Google Doc) is the editable working file; .pdf is an exported, locked version of the finished documentSend the editable file when you want feedback on the wording; send .pdf when the document is finished and you don't want anyone accidentally retyping itYou share the editable doc with your teacher for feedback, then export .pdf to send to a sponsor or put on a noticeboard

    👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

    +10 XP

    3 - Step-by-step Task

    You'll build a short worked-example proposal together, a 'Lunchtime Film Club for Third Years', and use it to practise every technique in the concepts table. You'll throw this one away. Later, you'll write the real one for your own Something Real. The sample paragraphs are provided below so you can copy them straight into your document; the focus here is the formatting, not the typing.

    +15 XP

    4 - Common Issues

    Common Issues

    IssueSolution
    Heading 1 made my title huge, way too bigThat's normal at first. You can adjust the size while keeping the Heading 1 style: select the title, then change the font size in the toolbar. The style stays applied; only the size changes.
    Find and Replace made too many changes, it also changed words inside other wordsPress {{kbd:Ctrl+Z}} (Windows/Chromebook) or {{kbd:Cmd+Z}} (Mac) to undo. Re-open Find and Replace and tick 'Match case' or 'Whole words only' to narrow the search.
    I can't find my downloaded PDFCheck your browser's Downloads folder (usually the bottom bar shows the latest download). The PDF saves to your computer first, you then drag it into your cloud storage folder if you want it there.
    Spell-check is flagging a name or word that's actually correctRight-click the underlined word. In Word Online the option is labelled {{btn:Add to Dictionary}}; in Google Docs it's labelled {{btn:Add [word] to personal dictionary}}. Either way, that word won't flag again in your documents.
    I've got a blue underline instead of a red one and I'm not sure what it meansBlue is a grammar suggestion (a tense, a missing comma, a wordy phrase); red is a spelling mistake. Right-click either one to see the suggested fix, or choose Ignore if you're happy with how you've written it.
    +10 XP

    5 - Portfolio Build — Write Your Proposal Draft

    Independent Practice

    Your goal: Turn your Something Real into a one-page proposal an adult would actually read and take seriously, the document you'll redesign, pitch from, and hand over at the end of the course.
    Time:~20 minutes
    Task: Write a real proposal for your Something Real. This is the document you'll redesign and pitch from in later lessons, so treat it as the real thing, not a practice run. Work through these four steps in order:
    1. Open your {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} folder and create a new document from inside it, named {{code:03_proposal_draft}}. Apply Heading 1 to the title so the document looks official from the first second.
    2. Write three short paragraphs using the same structure you just practised: what it is, why it matters, and how you'll do it. If you're stuck starting, begin each paragraph with: What = 'This is a…', Why = 'It matters because…', How = 'I'll do it by…'.
    3. Clean up the draft: set line spacing to 1.15, fix or ignore every red and blue underline, and if you change your mind about a name, date, or year group while writing, use find-and-replace to update it everywhere in one click.
    4. Download a PDF copy so both the editable document and the PDF live inside {{code:Digital_Portfolio}}.
    Success criteria:
    • Your proposal has a clear title that tells a stranger exactly what you're pitching
    • Three short paragraphs cover what it is, why it matters, and how you'll do it
    • The document reads cleanly, no red or blue underlines left, consistent formatting, comfortable line spacing
    • Both the editable document and a PDF export live inside your {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} folder
    +15 XP

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