Based on our meeting on Friday, I pulled up the research on keyboarding (I think it’s the same that Solomon found, or at least similar. I looked at more research, but it all seemed to agree with this research:
http://goo.gl/hpbVgv) and it confirms that below 3rd grade is not effective, students need 15-30 hours to learn the right fingers, and apparently the research shows that the person teaching keyboarding needs to understand it.
WHAT:
Here is a proposed matrix (
http://goo.gl/xNkaOQ) for student technology skills from Mary Beth Hertz, a K-8 tech teacher in Philadelphia in a high-poverty school.
Each skill is rated per grade as either an Introductory (I), Developing (D) or Applied (A) Skill.
We can use this as a guide or use it to develop our own. Based on this, I’d say the WPM recommendations would be:
3rd grade: 10 WPM
4th: 15 WPM
5th: 20 WPM
6th: 25 WPM
HOW:
We discussed using
Typing Club, as a majority of the team has used successfully and appreciate the reports and way students are managed. Sue also discovered that it uses SSO (Single Sign-On), which is great for us, since it means that students can use the exact same password they use to sign onto the computer.
WHEN:
We discussed having this at the beginning of the year when teachers are not necessarily using the computers for writing papers, testing, etc, to support students in typing a certain WPM for that year. Also, if they’ve achieved that WPM, there is no reason they have to continue the keyboarding program rather than doing some true typing (writing their writing workshop stories, blogging, etc).
Please provide your feedback via this blog post so we all can be a part of the discussion and decision making. Thanks!
