Touch Typing for Schools
Choosing good touch typing software
A good typing tutor should teach finger placement quickly and logically. It needs enough variety to build muscle memory without endless repetition. The best tutors also use meaningful vocabulary, not strings of random letters or nonsense words. Clear design features help learners move skills into the unconscious, and a teacher package should make it easy to monitor progress.
Vocabulary is crucial when building muscle memory. The software must use words children actually need and know how to spell. In many other typing programs, the word lists aren’t designed with literacy or education in mind. Whether you’re starting to teach typing or looking for better results, Englishtype can help. Touch typing for children has never been more important.
To get the best results, set clear goals. Either touch typing with full muscle memory or improved keyboard familiarity. Englishtype supports both approaches, but typing with automatic muscle memory offers the biggest benefits. For SEN pupils, it can completely transform written work.
BBC Bitesize Dance Mat Touch Typing
Englishtype is a specialist touch typing company, teaching touch typing for 25+ years and expert in skill acquisition. Englishtype was created by an Educational Psychologist, educational designer of BBC Schools Dance Mat Typing. If, like lots of schools, you are using BBC Touch Typing Bitesize / Dance Mat and are serious about teaching typing, it’s time to upgrade to Englishtype.
Teaching Children to Touch Type Across The Globe
The multi-sensory design and strong structure with carefully selected vocabulary content (sources include Alpha to Omega & National Curriculum Spelling Appendix) make Englishtype ideal for mixed ability groups in the classroom, challenging the brightest children whilst providing extra help for Special Needs children. It has been tested in classroom with thousands of children and developed & improved with input from teachers all over the world.
Englishtype supporting charity work in Indonesia
Learning To Type in School
Mainstream children, over their academic life, will produce hundreds of thousands of words in homework, coursework, essays, and dissertations. Touch typing is a tangible, easy to demonstrate, skill that increases employability. Professional careers like doctors, vets, solicitors and teachers must produce all kinds of written work very regularly. Keyboard skills are useful in almost all professions as records and customer information is computerised – builders, car mechanics, sales assistants – almost everyone uses a keyboard. Get your pupils to touch type and give them a skill for life and an advantage over peers. So many schools teach computer coding these days – but you can’t be a coder without being able to touch type!
Praise From Our Customers
Touch typing for Special Needs pupils – life changing
Learning to touch type has many benefits for Special Needs individuals, and is invaluable, or even life changing. Access to a laptop and being able to touch type properly is transformative. Written work with a pen is usually a disliked and/or upsettingly difficult process. The quality of work is not comparable with cognitive ability, and self esteem is often also damaged. Learning to type also benefits reading, spelling, comprehension & vocabulary.
The single most important benefit comes from transferring the skill in the brain into the unconscious physical skill centre, or muscle memory. This is a very powerful part of the brain. Being able to type by touch means better accuracy, higher speed, improved spelling, less visual stress, less physical stress on the hands, and decreases cognitive load in the conscious brain – as the unconscious controls the “process”, the conscious is free to focus on content.
Englishtype’s design and careful structure help a wide variety of Special Needs, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Fine Motor issues, Austistic Spectrum Disorder, Aspergers, Semantic Pragmatic & other language disorders, Slow Processsing issues and Visual Impairment. SENCOs, Specialist Support Teachers, Support Units, TAs, etc, around the country are achieving amazing results for their SEN pupils, transforming written work from a source of despair to one of pride.
Practicalities for teaching typing
ONLINE VERSION FOR SCHOOLS AVAILABLE!
Prices shown are an annual subscription, per pupil, per year (12 month period). Licences can be reallocated within the 12 months, so if a pupil leaves and you delete their account, that licence can be assigned to a new pupil. (See our Terms & Conditions).
System Requirements: Windows 7 or later; Apple Mac needs to be Catalina 10.15 or higher. Please use a modern browser like Chrome, Edge or Safari. If you use Firefox, it must be V103 or later. Englishtype can’t run on iPads or Android devices – you can try, it works on some high-end devices.
If you want to:
- Buy more than 10 licences;
- Pay by Purchase Order or BACs or Cheque;
- or are worried about online usage/broadband performance,
Please get in touch with us or give us a call on 01557 870967.