Feb

K – 5 Keyboarding – Is it important?

Filed Under (nextgenteachers) by Justin Medved on 05-02-2007

Does your school have a keyboarding program?

If so when does it start and what does it use as its main software?

We are looking at re-evaluating our program and I have to ask: Is it important that K-5 students learn to keyboard or will they just pick it up through exposure and integration of technology throughout the curriculum?

I have never had formal keyboarding training and I am doing ok, however if I had, I certainly would be faster and more efficient.

Does a faster typer mean a faster thinker, or just as faster typer?

I would love some ideas and directions to be pointed in.

4 Responses to “K – 5 Keyboarding – Is it important?”

Steve Says:
February 6th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Justin, at Shanghai Community International Schools we introduce keyboarding towards the end of 2nd grade. From 3rd grade on we stress it in all tech classes, going through grade 12. We’ve built a system that places the onus of practice on the student, although they do have some opportunity for practice in school. They take regularly scheduled tests and then graph their results. The atmosphere surrounding the tests is positive: emphasis on growth over the long-term, grading of their results plays a minor yet key role, stressing the ups and downs of results in the short-term, and frequent reminders of the benefits of becoming a touch typist. It takes very little time away from instruction, and we have found that the majority of students push themselves hard. As a school, the results are extremely positive. I’ll have to compile some statistics which I can do since they record each test. Our top typist is an 8th grader who types 140WPM with a classmate of hers at just over 100WPM.
marco Says:
February 7th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Wow those are impressive scores steve.
At Carol Morgan School we begin teaching typing in second grade and practice consistently thru fifth. I believe there is a final module with touch typing as a component in sixth grade. It does not take up too much instruction time, but i would like to see that total time drop even further in the future. Right now students type a little at the beginning of one class a week. We use Type to Learn and i have used a free download typing master pro for a little change of pace.
I also use typing scores as an introduction to Excel and graphing with the focus on improvement instead of a number.
Where is ISB at right now J? What options are you considering?
K. Lehman Says:
April 9th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
We have a system almost identical to that of Steve’s school above. Like Steve’s school, our students push themselves hard and have fun competing among themselves. The best keyboarding program (IMHO) is Type to Learn 3. I once had a substitute teacher who thought they were playing a computer game! Students like to see their improvement over time, and the program charts their progress.

I think the most important skill (more than WPM, which naturally increases with practice) is being a touch typist- not having to look at the keyboard. We have “keyboard covers” so that students aren’t able to look at the keyboard during tests. This might seem barbaric, but in the end, the students thank us for enforcing the “no looking at the keyboard” rule.

I told my students about Steve’s students who type 100-140 WPM. They were incredulous, and immediately asked: what was the percentage of accuracy?
Steve Says:
April 12th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
K,

Thanks for sharing, and I especially appreciate the skepticism because people should always question and it showed me that I needed to further clarify some points.

1) To address the question from your students, in order for a typing test to “count” a student must type 90% or better. The issue that hasn’t been brought up (and one I failed to mention initially) would be sustainability. In other words, how long can a student type at, say, 140WPM? We use an old typing program called Typing Tutor (I can’t find a copy online, but I’ll keep looking). The students can stop the test after 6 lines of text (I haven’t counted how many words this averages out to be) and receive a report giving them their speed and accuracy. I would assume that the tests your students take are longer than the ones my students take which would help to account for such high WPM from my students.

2) We also stress becoming a touch typist and have arbitrarily chosen 40WPM as the speed at which someone becomes a touch typist. If a student is below 40WPM they must cover their hands while taking the test. We feel that if a student can attain a speed of 40WPM or greater with their hands covered then they are a touch typist. From this moment on they no longer need to cover the keyboard when testing.

We lack a standard by which we can compare scores between schools, so any comparison between schools will be inaccurate. I’d be happy to email you a copy of Typing Tutor along with instructions for use that we give the students if you’d like.

The organization I work for has two campuses in Shanghai with a total of around 1,000 students (my campus goes through grade 12 while the other is younger and currently goes through grade 9). Here are our latest top speeds (all above 90%) between the two campuses:

163WPM – Grade 6
141WPM – Grade 8
133WPM – Grade 8
121WPM – Grade 5
113WPM – Grade 5
108PWM – Grade 6
106WPM – Grade 8
103WPM – Grade 12
100WPM – Grade 9
*We have 5 students in the 90-99 range
*We have 15 students in the 80-89 range