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Keyboarding Foundations 3+ (General)
Keyboarding Foundations 3+ (General)

Overview of the Keyboarding Foundations 3+ Curriculum.

Niki Frisby avatar
Written by Niki Frisby
Updated over a week ago

Keyboarding Foundations 3+ is the main curriculum for those who are working at a 3rd grade and above level. Because this is a broad age range and Typing Agent is adaptive to each student’s academic needs, you will be able to customize their target settings and permissions to best suit them at their grade level. For more information on changing a student's target settings, click here for a walkthrough.

While the student settings can be customized, Typing Agent recommends students practice 10 minutes, five (5) times per week and earn at least 85% accuracy in the exercises.

Curriculum Basics

The first time students click on the keyboarding curriculum, they will be prompted to take a placement test. This test determines their keyboarding level (baseline) and assigns their learning path through the program. For example, students who have mastered the home row will not be forced to begin with instruction on how to type home row letters. Instead, based on their placement test results, they will get keyboarding lessons that will promote growth while maintaining their home-row knowledge. For more information on the placement test, please click here. Note that should you want a one-size-fits-all curriculum, then you may opt to skip the placement test so all students are forced to begin with the home row lessons. CLICK HERE to see how to to skip placement tests.

Diagnostic Tests

After students have completed their placement test, they are given a two-minute diagnostic test. (If you have skipped the placement test, students will still be served this diagnostic test.) There is no way to skip this evaluation as it is meant to show students' growth over time. Students are evaluated individually at the beginning of their keyboarding instruction. As they go through the different Worlds (groups of lessons) in the keyboarding curriculum, this result is used as a point of comparison. Students get the exact same test after they've completed World 4 and beyond. (There is a specific report called Diagnostic Tests in the Reports section that permit you to see their results in graph or numerical form.)

Final Evaluation

At the end of the curriculum, students will be given a final evaluation test similar to a “final exam” they would take in a classroom. This test is based on the 2-star proficiencies set by you or our default settings. For more information on the final evaluation, please click here.

Worlds

The Keyboarding Foundations 3+ curriculum is organized into 31 different worlds. It’s important to note the terminology of how we categorize things:

The curriculum is made of worlds:

Within each world, there are lessons, denoted by the bubbled numbers:

And within each lesson, each hexagon denotes an activity.

You may notice the different icons under the activity that appear in the first three worlds. These icons let you know what type of lesson students are doing.

Video

The play button icon indicates that your student will have an instructional video to watch. WPM and accuracy are not graded in these exercises, as there’s no actual typing involved in watching a video.

Learn to Type

The chalkboard icon means that your student will be instructed by a virtual tutor which keys to type, where the keys are on the keyboard, and models how to type them properly. This exercise permits students to practice typing these keys correctly.



Star Destroyer

The star icon represents a mini-game called Star Destroyer where students type the key indicated by where the star is. This game is great because it permits students to practice using the fingers they've learned without looking down at the keyboard. This activity builds muscle memory of where certain keys are located and focuses on accuracy.


Box Typing

The console controller icon means that students play a mini-game called Box Typing. In Box Typing, letters appear on the boxes. Students need to press the correct letter to destroy all the boxes and win the game. Because the game presents letters students have learned randomly on the boxes, it challenges students' perception and forces them to focus on finding the letters and accurately typing them.


Left/Right Anchor

The pointing hands icons indicate the lesson will require the student to press and hold a certain key while typing others. This is great coordination practice for typing more difficult words and phrases. Also, it stops students from developing bad habits by using the incorrect hand to type specific keys. That is, if they should be using the left hand to type keys on the left side of the keyboard, by forcing them to hold down that J key with their right index finger, this prohibits that right hand from crossing over and bad habits from developing. These exercises are based strictly on the keys students have learned and focus on both accuracy and WPM.


Type-Up Adaptive

The up-arrow icon means that students play a mini-game called Type Up. This Type Up activity monitors the keys with which students had most difficulty typing in their practice activities, then devizes lesson adapted to the individual learners. The game makes students type the key correctly to make it disappear from the screen. This game focuses mainly on accuracy more than speed.

Skill Practice (Main Lesson)

The keyboard icon indicates the "meat and potatoes" of the curriculum; i.e., this activity is where we get your students' earn the grades they get. Essentially, these may be used as formative assessments. All previous activities are considered practice for this particular activity, whenever and wherever they appear. Students are expected to use only the keystrokes they have learned to type keys, characters, words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs and are graded on both WPM and accuracy.



How Students Access the Keyboarding Foundations 3+ Curriculum

When students log into Typing Agent, they look for the Keyboarding Foundations 3+ icon trophy icon in their interface. They find then click on it:


By selecting the above icon, this will take them to their lessons. If they wish to see how much they have done in this 3+ keyboarding curriculum, the "Your Mission Progress" icon below will help them. When they've completed all worlds, tests and the final evaluation, the progress bar will be at 100%.

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