The United States Common Core State Standards form the basis for education in the USA with most States adopting them as their standard or in dissenting States, as a minimum.
Standards specifically address the matter of keyboarding skills with a general empirical outcome related to speed and competency.
Of note is the requirement that children be able to type set amounts of text in a session with the amount of text increasing from 1 page for the 4th Grade to 2 pages for the 5th Grade and 3 pages for the 6th Grade and beyond.
Allowing say 300 words to a page and 30 minutes for a session, that is a typing speed of 10 words per minute. Realistically the typing speed will need to be much higher to allow for time off task and thought regarding the composition of the text.
We estimate that the following typing speeds need to be achieved to fulfil the requirement:
Grade Pages Words Session Length Time typing Required speed
4th 1 300 30 minutes 15 minutes 20 WPM
5th 2 600 30 minutes 20 minutes 30 WPM
6th 3 900 30 minutes 20 minutes 45 WPM
For a 4th Grader typing at 25 wpm it will take 14 minutes to type 300 words. That is a lot of typing for a single sitting. If 4th graders are slower than 25 wpm, the time commitment of sitting in front of a monitor goes up tremendously. For example, at 15 wpm, they would be typing non-stop for 20 minutes.
To achieve an average typing speed of say 25 wpm for a class, by the time they reach 4th Grade it will have been necessary to teach touch typing skills starting in the 2nd and 3rd Grades as hunt and peck methods will just not allow this speed. This is even more so if students are to reach the speeds required of the older grades.
The Standards are progressive with each one building on the knowledge and skills of the foregoing. Therefore, the notation to ‘produce and publish writing using keyboarding skills’ in 3rd Grade carries into all successive grades and it can be assumed that the implicit WPM goal for 4th Grade builds on typing lessons in the 2nd and 3rd Grades.
CCS ELA.Literacy.W.1.6. With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.2.6. With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.3.6. With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.4.6. With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.5.6. With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.6.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.7.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.
CCS.ELA.Literacy.W.8.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
