As the Wisconsin State Standards for English/Language Arts outline keyboarding proficiency and the Forward Assessment requires a certain level of skill, it is more important than ever that conversation occurs at the district level regarding keyboarding instruction and assessment.
Grade 3 students (W.3.6):
With guidance and support from adults and peers, use digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. Learn to produce writing through printing, cursive, and/or typing.
Grade 4 students (W.4.6):
With some guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. Learn to produce writing through printing, cursive, and/or typing (with sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting).
Grade 5 students (W.5.6):
With some guidance and support from adults, they intentionally select a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. Proficiently produce writing through printing, cursive, and/or typing (with sufficient comman of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting).
The Forward Exam is a computer administered assessment and includes multiple-choice questions, short answer questions, and a writing prompt in the ELA section. View the Forward Exam FAQ information for additional clarification on keyboarding requirements.
Using a special in-house typing software, Simply Type, you will gain typing speed while learning the proper technique to become a keyboarding master. You will learn introductory word processing and electronic presentation skills as well as learn about computer hardware, the internet, and business application skills to prepare for your future career. This course provides middle school elective credit.
Pursuant to s. 1002.20, F.S.; A public school student whose parent makes written request to the school principal shall be exempted from the teaching of reproductive health or any disease, including HIV/AIDS, in accordance with the provisions of s. 1003.42(3). Learn more about the process and which courses contain subject matter where an exemption request can be made.
As the use of technology for teaching, learning, and assessment becomes more prevalent in New York State schools, and as teachers and leaders continue to make decisions that ensure their students are receiving a quality, 21st Century education, the topic of keyboarding instruction will and must emerge as a focus area.
Keyboarding, the ability to operate a keyboard efficiently while typing, is an important skill that allows students to write fluently and communicate more effectively, and is critical to success in school, college, and careers in the 21st Century.
The newly-adopted NYS Next Generation English Language Arts Learning Standards include expectations for keyboarding instruction in the Production and Range of Writing section for all grades P-12 that offers an incremental year-by-year approach to developing effective keyboarding skills, as follows:
It is important that districts develop plans for keyboarding instruction as they both prepare for the transition to the NYS Next Generation English Language Arts Learning Standards, and transform teaching, learning, and assessment environments to meet the needs of 21st Century students. The following information may be of use as schools and districts develop plans or curriculum maps:
Please note that NYSED does not require, recommend, endorse, or advise on any specific program or product. All instructional decisions are made at the local level. If you have any questions about software options or attributes of quality keyboarding software, please contact your school/district technology leader, BOCES, or Regional Information Center.
Though keyboarding instruction is explicitly outlined in the NYS ELA Standards, NYSED recommends districts ensure that keyboarding skills are practiced and reinforced in all instructional areas, as appropriate, as part of regular instruction. In addition, keyboarding is one component of technology literacy, and keyboarding instruction should not replace current instruction in the appropriate use of technology (cyber safety, security, and ethics) or the use of digital tools to research, create, communicate, and collaborate.
As districts begin developing plans for keyboarding instruction, they should keep in mind that students should continue to improve keyboarding skills until they meet or exceed the locally-determined mastery-level. Targeted support may be recommended for students who do not possess, maintain, or progress in skill to meet district speed and accuracy goals. Additional considerations for keyboarding instruction include when and how to introduce function keys, characters, and letter accent marks to meet the varying needs of students.
Keyboarding activates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch (or "motoric" sense) simultaneously because it involves looking at the keyboard, listening to the sounds of the keys being struck, and physically pressing the keys with the fingers.
Digitalization has brought laptops, Chromebooks, PCs, and tablets into everyday use in schools. Even kindergartners are already using different devices to learn new things. The keyboard is an essential part of using digital devices, and practicing to touch-type is gaining more and more momentum. While the smallest of learners don't need to know how to touch-type when going to school, it's never too early to get familiar with the keyboard. Typewriter games on our website provide a welcome practice for learners, starting their keyboarding lessons later on. Studies show that kids build a positive, rewarding, and encouraging relationship for keyboarding through playing keyboard games.
Young learners can start with easy introductory games such as Key Memory Game, which improves both concentration and keyboarding skills. This brain game enables kids to train their memory, and the goal is to memorize and find pairs of the same cards and finally turn over pairs of matching cards with the keyboard. Kids are not required to know how to type, but they will start learning the keys on the keyboard, which helps when learning to touch-type later on.
Use technology: Use keyboarding software such as TypingMagic and online typing lessons such as TypingTrainer to supplement your in-class instruction and provide students with additional opportunities to practice their typing skills.
Advancing keyboarding skills is at the heart of many teachers. They want to see their kids type quickly, just as bad as each kid wants to be the fastest typist. Each gaming app associated with our website provides a different interface, theme, or strategy to be utilized when participating. Some videogames feature different levels from easy to hard. The differentiation between each level can help give students a goal to strive for. This keeps the kids interested and focused on the task at hand. If your school is already using a keyboarding program, our gaming site offers lots of extra material to keep students motivated.
Keyboarding is a skill everyone should be able to perform accurately, swiftly and automatically. Automaticity frees some of the limited capacity of short-term memory for other uses. Short-term memory, also frequently called working memory, is where learning and thinking activities occur.
One of our most popular games, TypingAttack, is an educational game where you learn to type words quickly. Your mission is to attempt to survive an attack in space. Approaching ships are identified as words, and you must type those words to destroy the ship before it reaches and destroys you. Higher difficulty levels are available, allowing the player to choose a more leisurely learning pace or turn up the challenge to a more high-intensity laser-blasting affair. TypingAttack is perfect for older students to hone their keyboarding skills and have fun at the same time.
Learning the entire keyboard can often be difficult. Fingers that are being used for typewriting should be limited to very few in the beginning. Our gaming website offers the ability to learn different portions of the keyboard at once. Home row, extended home row, upper row, all letters, a combination of letters and numbers, and 10-key options headline the different courses of action for the individual. This can benefit the teachers in the sense of a proper lesson plan. The teacher can ask everyone to start with home row keys only (with our Dance Mat and Type And Run Game) and then progress slowly to all letters on the keyboard with KeyMan and KeyTower. After each key has first been trained separately, it's a good time to start to type words by playing TypingRace and TypingAttack. This kind of "bottom to up" learning process supports all kids.
The development of various free keyboarding online websites such as TypeTastic has made some incredible progress in recent history. Studentshave been able to benefit from the new innovations and teachers have gotten useful tools to promote valuablekeyboarding skills. Nowadays keyboarding practice lessons can be more fun than ever in history! Now you can arrange a short summer keyboarding camp every day.
What are the primary advantages of keyboarding skills for kids?
The fingers will develop the muscle memory.
Hand-eye coordination gets a lot better.
Alternative method for students having issues with handwriting.
Increase words per minute speed and accuracy.
Kids learn also spelling words and vocabulary.
Better work opportunities when kids are adults.
Some of the game assets are self-created and licensed to us, and some games are bought from their creators, but most of the assets are free-to-use (open source) items downloaded from Github and adjusted a little to teach keyboarding skills. You can see the instructions, details about the creator, and their original license terms when you click the asset and scroll the page down. If you see there for example "MIT license", it means that everyone can use the source code under the permissive free software license. Some assets are distributed and licensed under GPL (GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE), meaning also you can re-use adjusted source code by right-clicking the asset and downloading the code hosted here.
c80f0f1006