Let's Learn & Practice Keyboarding!

Keyboarding is defined as the ability to operate a keyboard efficiently while typing. It 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.

Keyboarding is an important skill for our young people. It provides an useful and fun activity for our children to work on, while giving them the ability to be able to brainstorm and share their thoughts and ideas.

The following are guidelines and resources for each grade level at Van Meter.

Kindergarten students will....

• Identify a keyboard
• Explore a keyboard

• Use a keyboard to familiarize themselves with letter and number placement

First Grade students will...

• Be introduced to keyboarding through a systematic, online keyboarding program (Typing.com) and several online tools, apps, and tasks.
• Continue to explore a keyboard
• Uses a keyboard to familiarize themselves with letter and number placement, noting that all letters on the keyboard are capital letters

First through Fifth Grade Typing.com links on the Keyboarding Symbaloo at the bottom.

Second Grade students will...

• Be introduced to keyboarding through a systematic, online keyboarding program (Typing.com) and several online tools, apps, and tasks.
• This introduction will consist of a variety of keyboarding tasks including: enter key, space bar, backspace, delete and shift, hand placement and correct posture.

Third and Fourth Grade students will...

• Use a systematic, online keyboarding program (Typing.com) and several online tools and apps to learn and practice keyboarding through formal and informal instruction.
• Focus on technique over speed. This will include posture and hand placement.

Fifth and Sixth Grade students will...

• Continue to improve keyboarding skill using a systematic, online keyboarding program (Typing.com) and several online tools and apps to learn and practice keyboarding through formal and informal instruction.
• Focus on technique over speed. Continue to emphasis this to the students. This includes posture and hand placement.

Seventh and Eighth Grade students will...

• Continue to improve keyboarding skills to increase speed and accuracy using the systematic, online keyboarding program, Typing.com.
  
• Technique (including posture and hand placement) and speed reinforced.
• Correct posture and hand placement should continue to be reinforced.

To meet the overall goals and grade level skills we have put into place within the keyboarding program, our students will work on keyboarding skills in the library and classroom. It is also very important they work on these skills at home.

We have put together several awesome resources for keyboarding. Within the Symbaloo below there are online tools, apps and tasks for learning how to keyboard, games to strengthen keyboarding skills, and timed typing sites to track growth in speed and accuracy. This will include several holiday and seasonal resources and activities that are fantastic to use too.

Please encourage our students to practice several times each week. With consistent practice they will gain accuracy and speed, and also be able to convey their thoughts through keyboarding successfully.

And remember to have fun as they learn about and practice keyboarding. Our students really enjoy these resources and the various keyboarding activities.

Thank you for support our students as they learn, practice and become more efficient at keyboarding throughout the year,

In this Symbaloo, each square tile links to a different keyboarding website. The tiles are marked with words and images to explain what each links to and how they tie into our keyboarding program.

All of the website websites are helpful and engaging for anyone who wants to learn and practice keyboarding skills. We have outlined below which websites are perfect for what grade level.

Our Keyboarding Symbaloo will continue to change and grow as we add more websites, apps, tasks and resources.

Second through eighth graders will be using Typing.com.

The students will log into their Class Typing.com account. These can be found on the grade level Symbloo's, as seen to the right here. They will login with their school gmail.

We will monitor progress through these class Typing.com groups and accounts. They will be able to use these at school and home.

Shannon McClintock Miller

Innovation Director of Library Media and Instructional Technology

Jessica Burke

Teacher Librarian

You can find us and the Van Meter School Library on Twitter and Instagram at @vmlibraryvoice and on the Van Meter Library Voice Facebook page.

For the Van Meter Keyboarding Program, we used the New York State Education Department Keyboarding Instruction as a guideline. You will find their program here.