Word processing in second grade--best practices?

Second graders have been working on "about the author" pieces that they can use with their published pieces throughout the year. The learning objectives are basic word processing elements, but include so many obvious-seeming things that aren't at all obvious to them: typing in paragraphs (one space only after each word--when they instinctively want to use 2 or 3, auto-line-breaks, and return only for a new paragraph) capitalizing and punctuation (shift--not caps-lock, and space after the period--not before), on-screen editing (strategies for reading on-screen, where to click, the 2 different delete keys, the ever-important undo function), selecting and formatting text (a mouse skill that doesn't always come easily), spell-checking (in a different menu in every program, plus the care required to choose the right spelling and know when it's ok to click ignore), and inserting and resizing images (the simplest part). Add to this the steps of saving with a name that makes sense and various ways of finding your saved file, and this could easily be 2-months worth of lessons! (The minimally invasive approach breaks down somewhat here.) Compounded with their 2 wpm typing, a simple project becomes excruciatingly long.

Much of this they get in kindergarten and 1st grade, but practicing something just a few times and then not again for 6-9 months doesn't always make it stick. For the sake of our sanity, I've been compressing lessons, skipping spellchecking and certain other elements with some classes, and addressing problems with individual kids as they pop up just to keep the project to 4 class periods, but this seems like an imperfect solution, especially in light of the "teach one thing per lesson" philosophy.

Ideally, they would have lots of opportunities to practice these skills in their classroom, rather than just in the lab once a week, but until we achieve that ideal state, I need to develop an organized and purposeful way to teach and reinforce these skills so that I don't catch 4th graders still using caps-lock instead of shift and using the space bar to center a title, but also so that I don't bore or frustrate them.

I'm sure the principles we use for teaching conventions in writers' workshop should work here--I remember a chart Jane Hsu had in 1st grade where we added things as kids learned them for which they would be held accountable in all of their future pieces--capitals, periods, word-wall words, etc.--but it's tough to design such a chart to work across the grades (or even across classes) and in a once-a-week environment.

Anyone else have an organized way of teaching basic text skills that's not boring and still leaves us time to make comics and movies in a once-a-week lab setting?

Annual movies

The first graders have finished their "about me" movies in iMovie, and the second graders are about to start. Students will make a movie every year about who they are at that point in time, since they change so much so fast. When they graduate, they'll take all the movies with them on dvd as a sort of time capsule of their elementary school years.

In first grade, the movies are interviews with partners, in second, they write and read scripts, and in third-fifth they'll add new elements--editing, titles, transitions, music, still photos. This is a very new project, and I'm open to suggestions!