Typing Club

What Is Touch Typing?In contrast with normal typing, touch typing is simply pressing the keys without looking at them. If you can keep your eyes on the screen without looking down, you can touch type. This method is more efficient, less tiring, and comes with some surprising cognitive benefits, as we’ll see below.

Touch typing has a noticeable effect on the brain, psychologists say.

“The single most important thing is if you can type without looking down… If you can do that, what’s happening in your brain changes,” says Sue Westwood, a child psychologist who runs a touch typing programme called English Type. “Muscle memory is a physical skill—so once its trained, it becomes unconscious and automatic. It frees up your conscious cognitive resources to focus solely on the task in hand.”

If we can train our fingers to type without our brains having to think about it, we become more efficient at the task at hand. “We also know that by the time you get to 30 words per minute it’s a fluid process,” says Westwood. “The fingers are moving with no buffering going on. And from that point you get faster naturally.” (Saga Briggs, https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/21st-century-skills/touch-typing-kids-essential-21st-century-skill/)

Each student will need to bring a laptop and KidsAbility will provide access to a typing subscription to be used throughout the school term. Parents will receive a progress report at the end of the week.