Why Early Keyboarding Practice Impacts State Assessment Scores (And Why We Ignore It)
Last spring, I stood at the back of my 4th grade classroom during our first state ELA practice test, listening to the low hum of 28 Chromebooks and watching kids work. Most were leaning in, scrolling through passages or typing out their argumentative essays, but I stopped when I got to Milo’s desk. His neck was flushed pink, and he was hunched so close to the screen his nose was almost touching it. Both of his pointer fingers tapped one at a time, hunting for each letter like he was searching for a lost sock in a laundry pile. I counted while I waited for him to finish typing a single word: “because.” It took 11 seconds. When the 45 minute timer for the essay went off, he’d only finished half of his second body paragraph. He shut his Chromebook and stared at his desk, and I knew he wasn’t mad about his argument – he was mad that he couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
Two desks over, Lila had finished five minutes early and was sitting quietly with her book, like she always does. She’d been doing 10 minute typing practice with her dad after dinner since second grade, to prep for after-school coding club. She types 42 words a minute without looking at the keys. It’s not that she’s a better writer than Milo – it’s that her hands can keep up with her brain.
After that practice test, our assistant principal shared building-wide data: 36% of our 4th graders didn’t finish the writing portion, and when we surveyed them, 70% of those kids said the problem wasn’t that they didn’t know the answer. It was that they typed too slow. A week later, I saw a new research brief from our state department of education confirming what I’d already guessed: Students’ typing performance on state assessments is directly tied to how much keyboarding practice they got in first through third grade. It feels so obvious, right? If you practice a skill early, you’re better at it later. But almost no one is acting on it.
At school, we cut dedicated keyboarding classes years ago. Our specials rotation only gives us 45 minutes a day per class, and when administrators are pushing to fit more reading intervention and STEM time, keyboarding gets pushed off the schedule. It’s seen as a secondary skill, not something that impacts core test scores. At home, I hear the same thing from parents over and over: “He’s on his tablet all the time, he’s good with technology.” But tapping and swiping isn’t typing. Pecking at a screen with one finger isn’t building the muscle memory you need to type fast on a test. Most kids today don’t get any consistent practice with a physical keyboard until they’re already gearing up for their first state test in 3rd or 4th grade, and by then it’s too late to build that muscle memory without extra, catch-up work.
A week after that first practice test, I sat down with Milo’s mom after school. She leaned forward and said, “I had no idea. I thought they taught typing at school. When I was in middle school we had a whole semester of it, I just assumed it was still part of the curriculum.” I told her I’d had it when I was in middle school too, but now we just don’t have the time. She asked what she could do at home, and I gave her the three small, low-effort steps I tell all parents.
First, get a cheap physical keyboard. You don’t need a fancy new laptop, even a $20 bluetooth keyboard that connects to your family tablet works. Stop letting your kid do their written homework tapping on a phone screen. Second, have them spend 10 minutes, three times a week, on a free typing game site. I recommend Nitro Type for kids – it’s just car racing where faster typing gets you a faster car, they don’t even realize they’re practicing. Typing.com is also totally free for home use and walks them through finger placement step by step. Third, if you catch them pecking with only one or two fingers, just gently remind them to try to use all their fingers. It’ll be slower at first, but muscle memory builds faster than most people think.
Milo’s mom picked up an $18 bluetooth keyboard off Amazon the next day, and they added 10 minutes of Nitro Type to their after-dinner routine three nights a week. Two months later, during our most recent practice test, Milo finished his essay with three minutes left. He still pecks sometimes when he’s rushing, but his speed is up to 22 words a minute now, up from 11 in the spring. That’s enough to get all his ideas down before time runs out.
It’s easy to write this off as a niche problem, just a teacher complaining about scheduling. But think about it: State test scores impact what classes kids get placed into in middle school, they impact how much funding our school gets, they change how we plan lessons for whole grade levels. And a huge chunk of the score gap for writing isn’t because kids can’t write. It’s because they can’t type fast enough to show what they know. It’s such an obvious fix, but it gets pushed to the side because it’s not a controversial topic, it doesn’t get talked about at school board meetings, it doesn’t make the evening news.
I still have 11 kids in my class this year who type slower than 15 words a minute, well below the 30 words per minute the state expects for test-takers. I can’t fit a full keyboarding class into my daily schedule between reading groups and math practice, and our school can’t add another special right now. But small changes add up. This year, I started adding a 5 minute typing warm-up to our weekly computer lab time, and I send that same list of three tips home to every parent at the start of the year. It’s not a solution to all the problems with standardized testing, and it won’t close every opportunity gap. But it’s one small, obvious thing we can do today, that doesn’t cost a lot of money or take a lot of time, that removes one more unnecessary barrier for kids. Kids like Milo know the answer. They just need enough practice to be able to type it in time.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Early Keyboarding Practice Impacts State Assessment Scores (And Why We Ignore It)