Keyboarding Skills when should they be taught?
Most research supports starting students on formal keyboarding around grade 4," says Theresa Tovey, occupational therapist in Region #4 (Chester, Deep River, and Essex) in Connecticut. "All kids do not have the eye-hand motor coordination to learn keyboarding skills earlier than that." "That isn’t to say that nothing can be done with keyboarding before grade 4," Tovey continues. "It’s good for students to get familiar with the keyboard in the earlier grades. We encourage students to pretend there’s a line down the middle of the keyboard and to keep the right hand to the right of the line and the left hand to the left. We also encourage them to type with more than one finger because they may tend to use just the index finger. For later instruction, it’s good for students to develop the habit of using more than one finger early on." An informal look at school Web sites and listservs on the Internet indicates that much formal keyboarding instruction in s
