Once students have learned most of the keystrokes in their Keyboarding Foundations curriculum, our default settings will open up the Type Your Own Adventure (TYOA) curriculum. This TYOA area is a fun, optional curriculum that gets students to continue practicing their keyboarding skills using a storyline that focuses on being a great citizen in person or online. It is found under this tab:

In this Type Your Own Adventure curriculum, students will meet Ty, Keyana, and others who move the story along. This curriculum requires students to do lots of reading. If they're not strong readers, students may use our "Play" button to have the various sections read to them, if the teacher has activated this feature in the Accessibility Options area. Students work page by page reading the text and then different prompts that direct the storyline along different paths. For example, see one of the first pages that starts the story:

The Play button (highlighted in the red box) is visible only if the teacher enables that audio may be used with this curriculum. The student clicks on the button to have the selection read or simply clicks on the response, which will then turn green, then they type it correctly. Once they're done, another page will appear.

Note: Students are credited strictly for responses that they have typed completely. Should students begin typing a choice, change their mind then begin another, they are not given time, WPM or Accuracy credit for the portion that was not finished. When they begin another selection on the same page, the timer and calculations go back to zero and restarts. Also, time credit is given only for the time spent typing; not reading the passage.

The Robots Attack adventure can be up to 82 pages long but most students will not type that many. When students choose to have the story's protagonists behave properly or appropriately, the story becomes shorter. This gets them finishing their adventure sooner and finding the villain of the story who caused the destruction.

If teachers enable this curriculum to make it accessible immediately or if students have earned enough Experience Points to open it up, students can begin their adventure. They simply click on their "Phone Home" icon, found at the bottom right of their page, then click the rocket icon. This will open up the story for them.

This main focus of this curriculum is on accuracy to ensure students type the option they want with the fewest errors. Because there are different endings to this story, students can do this activity numerous times and make different choices to see the various ways the story can end.
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Typically, this curriculums opens up when students have spent enough time in their Keyboarding Foundations curriculum to earn Experience Points (XPs). K-2 students need to earn 2800 XPs and Grades 3 and higher must earn 5000. By using our XPs, students would have learned all or most of the letters needed to complete this curriculum well. As a teacher or administrator, you may override our default settings and make this adventure available to students immediately or earlier/later than we required.

There are many ways you may do this but here's the most reliable way to make sure you give your students access to this curriculum.

First, select your classroom.

Then, click your Students tab. It is here that you can select all, a few or just one student:

Use the check box under the word Roster to activate all students in that classroom or just choose one or more students by clicking the check box next to their name(s). When you do this, a fly-out menu appears to the right. From here, select Curriculum.

Now, scroll down to Type Your Own Adventure.

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Where is says Exp Points, type the number of XPs you want them to earn before this curriculum to open. Should you want them to access it somewhat immediately, after 1 or 2 keyboarding lessons, put 2 or 3 in that field then press UPDATE. The TYOA icon now will appear for your students when they log into Typing Agent. (If you want to take the curriculum away, simply press REMOVE.) Should you want to know where to find out how well your students did in this curriculum, click here for the reports.