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Kindergarteners and first graders have hands that are too small for touch typing. Do not do typing.com with them or any other site that emphasizes correct hand placement.
Print out 1 copy the checklist below for every K & 1 class that you teach tech to. Check off skills as each class accomplishes them. Do not just ask the class if they can do them. Have them demonstrate their mastery.
They need to start with letter recognition. (Click the arrow to the right to see all resources.)
Letter recognition activities and resources
Please note: letters on the Chromebook keyboards are lowercase. Do these activities with lowercase letters.
Sequencing
Here’s the order in which kindergarten teachers are to be teaching the letters:
m a s p t i n b c o f h d r g e l k u w j x v q y z
You will have greater success in the beginning if you start with the same letters as what they’re learning in the classroom. Remember that the Chromebook keyboards are printed with lowercase letters. You’ll want to do all these activities with lowercase letters.
Lesson structure
Kindergarteners have a short attention span. You’ll probably need to plan for activities to last only 10 minutes. Have 4-5 different activities ready for a 45 minute class session. Include some movement. They can’t sit the whole time.
Activities
Talk to the classroom teacher and see if she has manipulatives to share and send with her class for you to use.
Printable keyboards “Match me”
Print out a keyboard for each student. Put one under your document camera so students can match you exactly. Point to a letter and say it. Have the students repeat the letter and put their finger on the letter on their keyboard. Call their attention to where the letter is–on the left, middle, or right; top, middle, or bottom row.
If you have bingo chips, students can cover the letters with them.
If you laminate them, students can cross out letters with a dry erase marker.
Printable keyboard with room for student to write in username and password. You can have each student write in their information and practice typing it.
Alphabet room
Tape up the letters of the alphabet around your room. Letters should be 4” tall or bigger. Also have a set of alphabet cards. These could just be 3x5 cards where you wrote a letter of the alphabet on each. (Remember–lowercase!)
Ask students to find a letter and point to it. Maybe call on students or tables to walk to the letters.
Pass out the alphabet cards so each student has a letter. Have them walk to the letter that matches their card. They lay their cards on one table and you redistribute them to do again.
Pinch cards
Print out a keyboard on tagboard or cardstock for each student and cut into 3 sections like this. Just do one section at a time, or they will get all mixed up. Let them know whether they’re practicing the left, middle, or right of the keyboard.
Call out a letter. Have students hold it up with their finger pointing to the letter, not covering it up. You can see at a glance who has found the letter. Have neighbors help each other find the right letter.
Slide Show
Give every student a printed keyboard or pop-it keyboard and go through this slideshow. This link forces you to make your own copy because you want to customize the last slide for the password at your school. As you show each slide, the students find that letter on their keyboard and put their finger on it. Please note: The letters printed on the pop-it keyboards are capital. That's why the slideshow is in uppercase and lowercase. At time of purchase, there were no pop-it keyboards with lowercase letters to match Chromebook keyboards.
Alphabet maze worksheets to print
Starfall.com
https://www.starfall.com/h/abcs/ Little videos you show the class on the letters you’re doing that day.
YouTube videos
Act out the alphabet–good movement break
Animal Alphabet Move and Groove – good movement break
Out of order alphabet–letter recognition
"Name That Letter" from Letter Sounds
Cute Alphablocks version of the alphabet song
Coding + the Alphabet
https://beebot.terrapinlogo.com/ Have this up on the board to do together as a class. Click on arrows to write a simple program to move a bee around various mats of your choice. The forward and backward arrows move the bee in that direction. The left and right arrows only turn the bee; you then have to click on the up or down arrow to get it to move. Click the arrows to build the code. Then click GO to run it. All directions are there if you scroll down a bit to see them. Work together with students to figure out how to get to various letters. Call out letters as the bee bot goes over them.
GoNoodle
Great site for activity breaks, but you’ll need to make a teacher account first
https://family.gonoodle.com/activities/alpha-groove
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Just for variety, here are read-aloud stories to spark discussion
Once the class has mostly mastered letter recognition, then they can do some keyboarding practice where they learn the layout of the keyboard.
Keyboarding practice for K-1
Typetastic has the largest variety of activities and they are structured in a logical learning pathway.
Students do not log in to the site.
Post the link to the activity you want them to do that day in Google Classroom. Do not send them to the general landing page. Choose a specific activity they will all do that day and send that specific link.
Use Classwize to open Google Docs for them to practice their password and name.
Here's the page with all the steps and tips and ideas.
ABCya has few games for typing practice as well:
https://www.abcya.com/games/keyboarding_practice Not as gamified.
https://www.abcya.com/games/typing_rocket_junior They have to have a little speed on this one, so it's harder.
Keyboard Climber is fun. There are 3 slightly different versions at https://www.tvokids.com/school-age/keyboard-climber-collection. You want to send them the links directly to the games, though, so they don't click a different character and get off task. Alert them to the fact that this is a Canadian site, so they say "zed" for z.
They also need to learn drag and drop skills.
Click and Drag practice
Demonstrate and teach both ways of clicking and dragging:
Pointer or thumb click on object and holding down and another finger dragging (can also do this with 2 hands)
To do it with one finger: Click on object and continue holding down finger while dragging
ABCya games that are good for this:
https://www.abcya.com/games/tangrams
https://www.abcya.com/games/abcya_paint
https://www.abcya.com/games/break_the_bank_sorting
https://www.abcya.com/games/create_and_build_car
https://www.abcya.com/games/dress_for_the_weather
https://www.abcya.com/games/make_a_cupcake
https://www.abcya.com/games/make_a_face
https://www.abcya.com/games/make-a-house
https://www.abcya.com/games/pizza
https://www.abcya.com/games/make_a_robot
Here's a good one from another site: https://www.roomrecess.com/games/DragonDrop/play.html
When you are ready to test their drag and drop skills, here's the Google Slide Drag and Drop Apple Tree activity. Assign it through Google Classroom. Make sure you set it to make a copy for each student when you assign it. Call out directions similar to the following:
Put all the apples on the tree
Make all the apples fall off the tree onto the ground.
Put 4 apples back onto the tree in a square.
Walk around and see how students are doing. Identify any students that are struggling to follow the directions. It is fine to let students use a mouse instead of the track pad if that will help. A class set of computer mice has been given to each tech teacher. Please teach students how to correctly plug in and unplug them and how to gently wrap the cord for storage. As mice go bad, just throw them away. Once you no longer have enough to support the need in your classroom, contact kkarnes@gccschools.com .
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