Ed, Computer Science Teacher at a small private school

I teach at Holy Redeemer Grade School in Southwest Detroit. We’re a private Catholic school with 200 students. Approximately 65% of our community is Latino. Most of our students are bilingual and speak Spanish at home.

I use Touch-type Read and Spell in kindergarten through eighth grade alongside two other programs that teach coding and computer aided design (CAD). I like to rotate through the different applications to keep things fresh and interesting for the students.

The homeroom teachers have provided very positive feedback about having students use TTRS to practice their spelling words. We really like the ability to add our own lists to the program. The students then practice typing the words and take an assessment. TTRS shows the students the words they spelled correctly and shows them how they misspelled the other words. Students have the ability to retake the assessments and improve their scores.

With the spelling test results you can see top performers, low performers, typing accuracy stats and patterns in performance, so you know where each student might need some additional help. This information can then be relayed back to the homeroom teachers.

I think it’s really important to use typing programs to complement other computer applications because it helps students see the value in learning the home row keys. Touch-typing is a skill that facilitates a lot of what they do on the computers, from writing to coding.

For example, this morning I taught fifth grade. Most of the students are working on TTRS but I’m transitioning those students who are doing well to an application where they can use basic coding to program cartoon characters. Before class started, I explained what they needed to be able to do the programming and those students who hadn’t yet begun coding really raised their game with typing.

I saw this happen in the second grade as well. As their hands are still small, I had started them off with a coding program where they just had to use the mouse to drag and drop directional words. They needed to read some basic terms like "forward, backward," etc. and I couldn’t figure out why not all of the class was able to do it. It turns out some of the learners were struggling to read those words so I moved back to TTRS, was able to create a subject that targeted the words they needed for the other program, and could see how the two applications complemented each other.

It works well as a motivator to know that typing skills can be applied to do something cool, like coding. I remind them too that they don’t have to be perfect, but their accuracy has to be reasonable, above 80%, ideally in the 90s.

We had an eighth grader who wasn’t interested in the coding aspect of things, but decided she would rather work on writing a narrative of the project her partner was programming. She used the free writing feature in TTRS to produce pages and pages of text. Other students have looked through the subject catalog and picked out topics they’re interested in where they can type with images.

An added bonus is that in the process of learning typing, they’re getting better at spelling. Sometimes we even pivot over to the TTRS English Spelling Rules subject for more direct help. I find the spelling practice is particularly helpful for some of our students who are still learning English.

I remember we had some fourth graders who were really struggling with basic spelling. They were having trouble filling out forms and writing out their email addresses. I created individual TTRS Subjects so the students could practice spelling their names and email addresses. What I explained to those kids is that when you type something repeatedly, you don’t have to think about spelling it anymore, your fingers just do it. I demonstrated throwing a pencil in the air and catching it; the catch was automatic. The same thing happens with spelling. When you can touch-type, you hear a word, and your fingers just do it for you.