What do you think? Have you ever done anything like this? Sure, your district has probably identified minimum speeds for your students, but try personally motivating them using this method. Once they have conquered that, they can work to keyboard at 125% of their handwriting PB. They can work to beat their PB (Personal Best). NOW you have the gauntlet!! Now you have a way to challenge them to increase their keyboarding. Next, have them do the same thing with the same paragraph using a keyboard. Divide by 5 and you have the WPM for them.

IDEA: Have the students copy a paragraph by hand for one minute and then count the number of letters they completed. Our districts may have identified specific speeds for students of different levels to keyboard, but what does that mean to our students? Its a great way to assign grades, but it isn’t personal to the students. You know that the main advantage keyboarding has over writing is that it can be FASTER (aside from looking nicer, be less fatiguing, easier to edit, and enters content into a digital medium 😉 ).

How fast should your students keyboard? It all depends.