Challenge 6. Maintaining motivation

Typing Tournament Character 2
Staying motivated is key to achieving your goals!

The following information has been adapted from the Typing Tournament Guide to Best Classroom Practice.

For many students learning to type is a challenging exercise. As with all poor habits it takes a lot of discipline for a student with bad typing habits to break the: it requires completely rewiring their kinaesthetic memory in relation to the keyboard and that is not easy! The physical coordination required to accurately strike the right keys to represent the 26 letters of the alphabet with capitals, numbers and punctuation is a marvel but one that for many is not easily achieved.

To make the challenge of learning to type easier Typing Tournament includes a host of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators:

  • Intrinsic motivators include: instant feedback on words typed, speed tests, lessons, drills and games.
  • Extrinsic motivators include: printed certificates, games, reward movies, and collection of tokens and badges.

Ways to further enhance student motivation:

Certificates and reports:

  • Typing Tournament generates a wide range of reports and certificates that reward students for effort and affirm their achievements.
  • Print and present them in class, for school assembly, and send home to parents for archiving in students’ folios.

Leaderboards:

  • The powerful class leaderboard tracks every word typed and resets at the start of each week
  • Foster competition between classes by checking “Show Only – My School”
  • Filter by state and age group and see the ranking of your class overall

The regular Typing Challenge:

  • Typing Challenges enable classes to go head-to-head around Australia, lifting student engagement.
  • Trophies are awarded for 1st, 2nd, 3rd fastest classes by age group in the state.
  • Trophies are awarded for 1st, 2nd, 3rd most words typed by age group in the state.
  • Printable Achievement Certificates are generated.

Printable certificates:

  • Provided for Speed tests and Level tests
  • May be printed either by the student or the teacher
  • Can be presented in class, at assembly or on any other occasion that builds the profile of typing in the school and rewards the student for their achievement

Speed tests:

  • The Typing Tournament Speed Test can be taken at any time with the results displayed on-screen upon conclusion and logged in the reports section. Many teachers use the Speed Test to get a quick feel for how students are progressing and give them feedback relative to own personal best.
  • Start each lesson with a Speed Test to give the students instant feedback on their overall progress and to give a dynamic feel to the lesson.
  • Conduct a weekly Speed Test to build an individual class leaderboard.
  • Conduct a school or grade-wide competition to find the fastest typist.
  • Invite members of staff or the parent body to complete speed tests to find the fastest typist in the school community.

Wall charts: Students love to see their progress plotted on wall charts and Typing Tournament provides a wealth of information that can be used to generate them. Your charts could include:

  • Results from a weekly Speed Test
  • The % accuracy achieved on a weekly Speed Test
  • Levels passed (1–16) on the map
  • Badges achieved

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