Typing Olympics

How do you teach keyboarding skills? While I have kindergarten and first graders use the keyboard and start to learn where the letters are, I do not start officially teaching typing until 2nd grade. At the beginning of 2nd grade I have my students spend 6 weeks (once a week classes) going through the levels of Dance Mat Typing. This gives them a good foundation and they can successfully type paragraphs for class efficiently. The classroom teachers really appreciate it.

In 3rd grade we spend a few weeks doing some intensive keyboarding again. This time, though, it is competitive (with themselves) and they have choice about which program(s) to use. Check out this screencast I made to show you (teachers) how I implement this activity.


If you want the template, let me know in the comments and I will come back and add it. Hopefully this gives you some ideas for another way to get your students typing. Thanks for reading/watching.
Edited: Here is the template so go ahead and download it from my google drive.

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