1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Alice Keeler is a mother of 5 and a teacher in Fresno, California. She has her B.A in Mathematics, M.S. in Educational Media Design and Technology and is currently working on a doctorate in Educational Technology with an emphasis in games and simulations. EdTech speaker, blogger, and presenter. Founder of coffeeEDU, a 1 hour conference event for educators. New Media Consortium Horizon report advisory panel member. High school math teacher for 14 years. Currently teaching pre-service teachers curriculum, instruction and technology at California State University Fresno. Teaches online for Fresno Pacific University in the Masters in Educational Technology. Passionate that kids are not failures, researches gamification in education to increase student motivation.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: English Language Arts
CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP4 Model with mathematics.
CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP5 Use appropriate tools strategically.

2. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
© Harpur Garden Library/Corbis
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
With 40 acres of gardens and greenhouses, springtime at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden means bursts of color everywhere you look. The garden does have a direct role in scientific research at the college, with students and faculty of botany, etymology, and other disciplines finding much to study in the gardens.
But for the population of Cambridge, England, and visitors from around the globe, the Botanic Gardens provide an experience that’s hard to beat. For the studious gardener, every plant tended here is also documented in the Botanic library database. For the rest of us, it’s essentially a park, where every tree, flower, and shrub is labeled, so you know exactly what’s tickling your fancy or making your allergies act up.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 1
Office 365
Create an Excel Spreadsheet in Office 365 2
Web Search
Locate data on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden or other table of data on plants and import the data to a tab in the Excel Spreadsheet. 3
Search for how Paste Special can help you to import data to your spreadsheet. 4
Thinking
What value from your data would you enter to call up the additional information for that value? Clean up your data table and organize the columns to prepare for the vlookup table. 5
Create a vlookup on a separate tab to call data from the table based on an input value.
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 1
Office 365
Create an Excel Spreadsheet in Office 365 2
Web Search
Locate data on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden or other table of data on plants and import the data to a tab in the Excel Spreadsheet. 3
Search for how Paste Special can help you to import data to your spreadsheet. 4
Thinking
What value from your data would you enter to call up the additional information for that value? Clean up your data table and organize the columns to prepare for the vlookup table. 5
Create a vlookup on a separate tab to call data from the table based on an input value.
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 1
Office 365
Create an Excel Spreadsheet in Office 365
(Possible Search Queries:create excel 365, onedrive excel, creating documents in OneDrive )
Sources
Lynda.com:
Office:
Students should log into the 365 account. From the Create menu they will choose “Excel.”

8. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 2
Web Search
Locate data on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden or other table of data on plants and import the data to a tab in the Excel Spreadsheet.
(Possible Search Queries: cambridge university botanic garden, cambridge university botanic garden list of plants)
Sources
Botanic Gardens:
Plants in the Garden:
Fragrant Garden:
Excel Jet:

9. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 3
Web Search
Search for how Paste Special can help you to import data to your spreadsheet.
(Possible Search Queries: Excel paste special)
Sources
Excel Easy:
Using Paste Special to paste the values can help with formatting issues when copying and pasting into an Excel spreadsheet.

10. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 4
Thinking
What value from your data would you enter to call up the additional information for that value? Clean up your data table and organize the columns to prepare for the vlookup table.
(Possible Search Queries: vlookup, vlookup organizing data)
Sources
Office:
Excel Tip:
Student answers will vary. Each table of data has multiple columns. Students will need to decide which column they would be looking up and then referencing the other columns. Students will need to have their reference column first and the values to be sorted alphabetically.

11. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on the plants at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. 5
Web Search
Create a vlookup on a separate tab to call data from the table based on an input value.
(Possible Search Queries: vlookup, writing vlookup formulas, absolute cell referencing)
Sources
How to Geek:
GCF:
The formula for a vlookup formula starts with an equals sign followed by vlookup(
The cell containing the lookup value should be referenced.
The next value (separated by a comma) is the table of data, not including the data headers.
Use absolute cell referencing (dollar signs) on the table range.
The third value in the vlookup is the column that is being matched.
The lookup formula should be duplicated for each column of data that needs to be returned. In the sample table there were 4 columns. The first column is the value being looked up. A formula to return the value in columns 2, 3, and 4 need to be created.

12. Create a vlookup table in a spreadsheet to find information on plants.
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.