Every year, the need for elementary students to learn typing before middle school is becoming more and more important. This article and accompanying eBook outlines four reasons why every elementary school should have a keyboarding curriculum in place to help properly teach 3rd-5th graders how to touch type.
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1. Standardized Testing Requirement
More and more states are making the move to online-only assessments for their standardized testing. Meaning any student who struggles to type efficiently will be at a disadvantage on these tests. When a student doesn’t have to put the mental energy into typing, and they are confident in their typing, they are less anxious about the time limit and can produce more well-thought answers. You don’t want poor test scores to affect your school simply because a very bright and smart student struggles with typing.
2. It’s Simply Too Important to Ignore
Despite what we may want for our students, they are inundated with technology from a very early age. The amount of typing needed to every day activities, such as emails, homework, quizzes, and much more, is unavoidable. Especially with more and more districts adopting a 1:1 program, providing students a personal laptop, but not always the resources to use it properly. It’s much easier for students to learn touch typing early and properly rather than trying to break bad habits later.
3. Typing Helps With Learning Disabilities
Both dysgraphic and dyslexic students can greatly benefit from learning to type. And for students with dysgraphia, Jennifer Bennett, owner of BrainWorks in Pennsylvania, learning to type should happen sooner rather than later. Moving a student’s method of communication from handwriting, which may be difficult and cause frustration, to typing, which is less difficult, especially once learned, means dysgraphic students can express their thoughts with much more clarity.
4. Typing Improves Other Learning Skills
Many studies have shown that learning to touch type can improve other learning skills, such as vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing. The words and sentences being typed are absorbed by the students whether consciously or not. One Australian study showed that student who regularly used a typing program scored higher on the writing portion of assessments. Learning to type can improve writing skills, which are used in many other subjects/classes. The act of typing also hones a student’s visual-motor skills, which can translate well to playing an instrument or handwriting.
Whatever reason your school or district has to start a typing curriculum, Type to Learn can help. Our cloud-based program contains no ads or external links, has three different reports, over thirty customizable settings and is backed by scientific research, making it one of the most effective programs at teaching proper touch typing. Learn more about Type to Learn, or get started today by requesting a 30 day free trial.
