Maths Invaders at Templeton Primary School
Aidan Schanssema, Director of Teaching – Numeracy, from Templeton Primary School gives insight into the use of Maths Invaders by Year 2 classes at the
Touch typing is the ability to use muscle memory to find keys quickly using all ten fingers and without using the sense of sight. It is the same kind of skill piano players use. Being able to type correctly significantly improves typing speed and eliminates errors. Being able to touch type makes you more productive and is a vital skill worth learning.
Touch typing is a method of data entry based on muscle memory instead of sight. This method allows you to achieve a much higher speed of data entry, especially if you need to transcribe text from other material. Learning to touch type significantly improves your computer productivity, increases your speed of entry, and reduces fatigue.
However, many people engage in the bad habit of ‘hunt-and-peck’ typing. These bad keyboarding habits are often learnt at a very young age and then carried on through life. Many seasoned professionals with years and decades of computer experience have really bad keyboarding skills. It is easy to understand, though, as touch typing requires dedicated practice to learn it well. That is why we created TypingTournament.com, a powerful online typing tutorial, to give you the most advanced learning experience and let you develop your typing skills faster.
Learning keyboarding skills is vital for today’s learners and tomorrow’s earners. Typing Tournament Online is a great way to build the foundational typing skills that today’s elementary school curriculum requires since keyboarding is a fundamental part of literacy. Children with good keyboarding skills are more able to collaborate with peers, publish projects to the web, or simply play games and chat with friends.
There are many features in Typing Tournament that set it apart from other typing practice software. The fundamental difference is the research-driven teaching process at the heart of the software. This unique approach allows children and adults to quickly learn to type.
Typing Tournament Online does not force you to repeat the same characters over and over again in a meaningless way. Each keystroke is part of a carefully sequenced learning progression that uses mastery learning to control each student’s progress. The program is divided into 16 levels with four keys introduced during each of the first eight levels and then consolidated in levels nine to sixteen.
TypingTournament.com measures each keystroke and accrues the results to power the comprehensive reporting capabilities that allow teachers to monitor the progress of each child and to drive the leaderboards.
Motivating children to use the right fingers on the right keys is one of the keys to classroom typing success and Typing Tournament Online has a host of inbuilt features that encourage students to type correctly with minimal supervision from teachers.
EdAlive has prepared a wealth of resources of teachers and a comprehensive guide to best practice to support the teaching of touch typing in the classroom.
Photo by Wiertz Sébastien 
Aidan Schanssema, Director of Teaching – Numeracy, from Templeton Primary School gives insight into the use of Maths Invaders by Year 2 classes at the
The link between speed, confidence, fluency and attainment What does a confident student look like? Motivated – an enthusiastic learner who is ready to respond
Research demonstrates that the consistent use of Maths Invaders significantly boosts students’ answer speed (confidence) and attainment (maths age) at a rate well above normal