Keyboarding is as Important as Handwriting
Keyboarding means typing correctly, using the same finger stroke for the same letter every time. This allows a student to put thoughts onto the computer, and this opens opportunities for endless tools and accommodations. All students benefit from learning keyboarding, but dyslexic students stand to gain the most. Keyboarding plays to the dyslexic strengths of muscle memory and pattern recognition. And keyboarding provides a backdoor into spelling!
Why Keyboarding is Powerful for Dyslexics
Hunting and pecking won’t do, but touch typing, in which there is a specific muscle movement for each letter of the alphabet, embeds words kinesthetically, as muscle memory, bypassing some of the difficulties dyslexic learners face with other spelling methods. Most students with dyslexia have excellent muscle memory (watch them ski and skateboard!) and the wise tutor or parent puts this strength to work. Keyboarding can save a dyslexic or dysgraphic student a huge amount of time and allows teachers to grade papers that might otherwise be illegible.
How to Teach Keyboarding for Dyslexic Students
For keyboarding to support writing, spelling, and reading, the student must use the home keys and return to them after every stroke, with no exceptions. Teach hand position and posture at the same time.
For dyslexic learners, avoid the programs that teach letter combinations that aren’t words. These programs work well for the average learner but can cause confusion for dyslexics.
I recommend teaching one word at a time. Once the student masters the movements for the word, have the student practice typing it without looking at the keys. It helps to cover the keyboard. A cut-out shoe box works well. At this point, the student watches the monitor to see if the correct letters are appearing. After the word is mastered while looking at the keyboard, the student learns to type the word while looking at it on a paper near the monitor. Then student types it with his or her eyes shut. When the student can type the word in all these ways, celebrate! Then start a new word. The process is slow at first, but don’t hurry it. Once all the letters have been incorporated into words, learning new words goes much faster.
Dyslexic Students need Meaningful Context
In typing as in other subjects, dyslexic students respond well to context and tend to forget unattached information. So, I like to have the student learn each of the words in a sentence so that the words have context and meaning. I often use the pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” When the student has learned the sentence, all 26 letters have been mastered.
Practice, Accuracy, and Rhythm
Five or ten minutes of practice a day is sufficient if done every day, and proves far more effective than practicing for an hour once a week. Accuracy and steady rhythm pay off; speed does not. Speed will come, but should not be the goal, as it tends to encourage bad habits. Thus typing games on the computer that reward only speed cause more harm than good.
Do not correct errors. This seems counter-intuitive, but the goal of keyboarding for dyslexic students is to develop muscle memory for words — not just for letters. That requires doing the entire word as a unit. Corrections mid-word spoil the sequence. It’s better to just hit the space bar and start the word again. When the sentence is done, delete all the mistakes.
Don’t Wait for Typing Class at School
Typing classes at the middle school level often reward only speed, with accuracy being achieved by correction. Such an approach is counterproductive for students with dyslexia. It’s best for dyslexic students to learn keyboarding at home or with a tutor or parent before taking a class in which speed rules. I recommend starting keyboarding as soon as the student’s hands are big enough to negotiate the keyboard.
In my experience, many dyslexic students love the keyboard and with coaching quickly advance and begin using it as a tool for writing and spelling. In fact, words learned on the keyboard become part of the reading vocabulary as well. After good keyboarding habits are in place, an online typing program makes sense. There are many that make practice fun by using a game format. Touch Type Read Spell (TTRS), available at www.readandspell.com, stands out.
If you have a Pokemon fan, take a look at Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure DS (EU Import)
by Yvonna Graham, M.Ed.
www.dyslexiakit.net
@GrahamYvonna