Tag Archives: keyboarding

Learning to Type: Update

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In July 2011, I blogged about the typing lessons and practice that I implemented in my Grade Two classroom. Find that post here.

On 21st July, 2011, all of my students participated in a typing test using 10fastfingers. They had to test themselves three times and then I recorded their best words-per-minute score.

Each week for the rest of the year, we completed about 30 minutes of typing practice using activities that I collated on this Sqworl.

Some of the students also used the typing games during spare time at home and school.

I tested the students using 10fastfingers again in September and at the end of the school year in December.

The results were very pleasing for five months progress, but what was most pleasing was the obvious improvement that the student bloggers showed.

9 of my 22 students earnt their own blog from June onwards and their typing progress was more rapid than the non-bloggers. I have annecdotally recorded evidence of my students who do more blogging as making more progress with typing in the past, but it is good to have some (small) data.

In 2012, I’d like to test my Grade Four students from the start of the year and monitor their process. It would be ideal to compare them with a non-blogging class too if that was possible.

I truly believe that the ability to type with reasonable speed and accuracy helps students to better cope with the technological world they live in. Students are increasingly going to be held back in their school work, everyday life and future career if they don’t have adequate typing skills.

In 2012 I hope to help my students to learn to type so that they can focus more on their more important tasks – communicating, collaborating, creating, curating and so on.

How do you structure typing practice and lessons in your classroom?

Have you seen a correlation between blogging and typing improvement?

Do you have any other suggestions for typing games or tests?

Learning to Type

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Over the years, the need for my students to be able to type has become increasingly important.

Being able to type with reasonable speed and accuracy helps students to better cope with the technological world they live in. Students are increasingly going to be held back in their school work, everyday life and future career if they don’t have adequate typing skills.

Of course, we still write with pencil and paper daily in our grade two class and have formal handwriting lesson,s but I find typing lessons and practice is often neglected in the primary curriculum.

Throughout the course of each year, I see a big improvement in students’ typing skills just from the regular practice they have with blogging, however we try to do typing practice where we can. This has become easier with the 20 netbooks and 10 classroom computers we now have in our class of 43 students. Typing practice is now a regular activity in 2KM and 2KJ.

Typing Test

Last week, I had the students take a typing test.

Thanks to @rebeccacarr87 for suggesting 10 Fast Fingers Speed Test which, despite the ads, was perfect for my grade two students. It contained high frequency words and no punctuation. It also gives a simple “words per minute” (wpm) score.

typing2

I wrote the students’ best wpm score on a class list and told them we’ll retest again with the goal of improving by the end of the year. The score range was 4 to 21 with an average score of 9.5 wpm. It will be interesting to see how they improve. I only wish I had thought to test them at the beginning of the year!

Teachers of older students might find this Typing Speed Test more useful as it contains more complex paragraphs including punctuation. This test gives a speed and accuracy score.

Typing1

Online Typing Activities

I have put together a collection of free, online typing games for my students into this Sqworl.

The link is http://sqworl.com/9r5u8p

Typing sqworl

Feel free to use it with your students too!

Lessons Vs Practice

I like to give my students a mix of formal tuition in typing as well as practice time.

How people get to the point of being able to touch type is something that interests me. I learnt “by doing” while my colleague, Kelly Jordan learnt through formal lessons, however we both got to the same place as proficient touch typists.

If you consider yourself a touch typist, I am interested to hear how you learnt to type. Did you learn by doing or did you learn through formal touch typing lessons?  Please complete this quick poll!


How do you approach typing lessons and practice with your students?


Do you know of any other good typing websites?