Keyboard Chatter Curriculum
Keyboard Chatter is the curriculum adopted by Davis School District to be used to for keyboarding instruction in the elementary schools.
Notes from the author: Susan Boothe, Spectrum Publishing
Background: One of the truly interesting and rewarding things I have done is to be involved in helping children learn to keyboard efficiently. For years it was believed that their little hands and their limited reading and writing experience prohibited them from learning to keyboard. Experience has proven that theory incorrect and has allowed us an exciting opportunity to guide young children to the acquisition of a highly useful and nearly mandatory skill for the technologically advanced society in which we live.
I have now had the opportunity to teach children from 2nd through 5th grade to keyboard. Students at all of these levels have realized incredible success. I do believe that if I had my preference, I would choose to present Keyboard Chatter to third grade students for the following reasons:
1. Their hands have grown to a size which is conductive to keyboarding and their coordination has reached a nice level of refinement.
2. They have had significant reading and writing experience and are very comfortable with the ideas of letters coming together to make words and words coming together to make sentences.
3. The intensive classroom time required in the 1st and 2nd grades to develop a strong reading skill has been utilized and a keyboarding course seems a very natural next step.
4. Two or three years of strong keyboarding reinforcement can be realized after the 3rd grade and before students move on to junior high school.
Keyboard Chatter is the result of much study and observation of the ways in which children learn such a psycho-motor skill as keyboarding. It is also the result of a strong desire on the part of many parents, teachers, and administrators to provide a critical keyboarding skill to elementary students before they develop poor keyboarding techniques which prohibit them from being truly efficient keyboarders. Following is a brief summary of many of the important concepts on which Keyboard Chatter is based.
1. Keyboard Chatter accepts the premise that keyboarding software tutorials do not teach students to keyboard properly.
2. Keyboard Chatter is a teacher-intensive instructional course.
3. Keyboard Chatter presents the alphabetic keyboard in twenty 30-minute lessons.
4. Keyboard Chatter maintains that the single most important concept in acquiring a strong keyboarding skill is proper keyboarding technique.
5. Keyboard Chatter relies on three important teaching strategies for helping students master the computer keyboard:
1. The use of "finger families" for presenting the keyboard which allows young minds to compartmentalize the learning of keys
2. The use of music to reinforce important concepts
3. The use of words and word combinations which are used in the development of reading and spelling skills
6. Keyboard Chatter assumes that most of the keyboarding instructiona time will be spoent actually keyboarding
7. Keyboard Chatter drills students on high frequency words--particularly those which are used in traditional spelling and reading books on the elementary level. Thus, this keyboarding instruction reinforces the reading and spelling experiences of the students.