Challenge 2. A whole school strategy

The following information has been adapted from the Typing Tournament Guide To Best Classroom Practice.

Typing is a key life skill that should be acquired and developed longitudinally.

Typing Tournament helps teachers achieve the keyboarding curriculum outcomes across all years of schooling.

• The teaching of typing skills, like handwriting, is a process and needs to be introduced early to every student with ongoing practice, exposure and increasing expectations year by year.
• Used systematically across a school Typing Tournament is an adaptable, expandable tool that transitions students from the rudiments of typing right through to typing speeds exceeding 100 words per minute!
• Typing Tournament can be implemented as a whole school strategy or class by class and is commonly used from Year 2 through to Year 12.

• Ideally students should be well engaged in the process by Year 3.
• Some schools start with one class or year level and as they progress through their schooling the typing programme expands with them. Other schools start all grades at once with an emphasis on training the teachers to use the programme effectively in their classrooms.
• In many cases ICT teachers use it with a range of classes and build out from there to other classes and teachers.
• Regularity and repetition are key when learning a kinaesthetic skill like typing and like all such skills the time taken to learn them varies greatly with the individual.
• Our current estimate is that students take approximately 20 hours of focused, regular use to achieve functional 10-finger typing. Younger students take longer.
• Schools that invest in a long term typing strategy can expect the majority of students to achieve touch typing speeds in excess of 40 words per minute (WPM) with some students exceeding 100 WPM.