One of the learning goals for fourth-graders at PBE this year is to improve their keyboarding skills. That includes setting goals for accuracy and speed – 90 percent accuracy and 20 words per minute – and maintaining proper form on their keyboards: having their hands on the correct sides of the keyboard, keeping their fingers anchored on the home row keys and tapping the space bar with their thumbs, for example. You get the idea – not to hunt and peck with two fingers!

 

With the help of their teachers and Darcy Kocsis, one of the district’s technology integration specialists, the students took a typing pre-test and worked from there. They used a program called Typing Club and progressed to editing paragraphs and typing them for keyboarding practice.

 

They also focused on understanding the editing process when creating digital artifacts in Google documents. Students were introduced to digital tools in a Google document to catch errors such as editing underlined words in blue forgrammar, punctuation and capitalization, or red for spelling, and knowing the difference between the two. They also focused on spacing, headings, and using the tab key for indentation. Some students used the Select-to-Speak feature to listen to their revisions for the purpose of catching sentences that did not sound correct.

 

 

At the end of their five-week program, the students took a typing post-test to see how well they did with their speed and accuracy. They also developed such better keyboarding habits. Overall, they made great strides! Many met or exceeded their goals and other progressed significantly toward them. Well done fourth-graders! This is a skill you will have for your lifetime.