Reflecting on Reflecting

In my 6th grade tech class, called Web 2.0, my colleagues convinced me to include some keyboarding practice in the curriculum. It’s not a fun topic to teach, but it is a really important life skill and it’s not taught in any of the kids’ other core classes. One of my fellow tech teachers had a great idea to have students keep a spreadsheet of their keyboarding speeds throughout the quarter. The students take a 1-minute test every day and log their score in the spreadsheet. We use the sheet to teach students about using formulas, and it’s a good daily reflection tool on their growth.

We use NitroType and typing.com as tools for practice. NitroType is really engaging and I really like the drills on typing.com.

I have the students calculate their average speed (the average formula), their growth (using max, min, and subtraction), and how many times they got 25 words per minute or more (using the “countif” formula). A finished spreadsheet looks like this.

Here’s what I find fascinating. I think teaching keyboarding is really boring. The online tools make it bearable. I put on my game face and practice with the students, and challenge them to race me to keep myself engaged in it. The students, however, LOVE it, and I think what they like about it is that they track their progress with a number. They know when they’ve improved. The goal is crystal clear and they can tell instantly if they’ve met it.

At the end of the quarter, I asked the students to reflect on whether they met either the goal I set for them (which was to gain 10WPM and be over 25WPM at least once), and whether they felt they had met their personal goal. These were some of their comments.

“I Met my score :)”

“I love TYPING”

“My goal was to increase by 10 words per minute. I started at 27 words per minute and slowly increased and got better until I got to 39 words per minute which was past my goal”

“My goal was to get to 35 WPM and I passed it by 10, I am really happy.”

“My goal was to get more accurate and more comfortable without looking at the keys. This I think I did improve on.”

“I improved so much!!!!!!!!”

“I think I’ve really improved with my keyboarding. I think I met my goal because I beat 25 by at least 20 and all of my scores were in the green. I will continue to practice keyboarding as I believe it will help me in the future. The time we had in class helped my improve and I fell like I’m 10 times faster than I was last year. Even if that is an exaggeration I really mean it when I say I got a lot better, so thank you for making me not only a better typer, but a better student as well.”

“I got to 25! That was very exiting because I am not that fast at typing! and I made my spread sheet very colorful!”

“I am proud of where I am with my typing and gained ten WPM”

 

Isn’t it interesting how motivating it is to have a clear goal and know immediately if you’ve met it or are improving? I see this every quarter. I wish I had a way to give students this instant satisfaction in classes in which progress is slower and proceeds over the course of a project. Learning coding can feel like this if you do activities like an Hour of Code, but what about learning in a creative problem-solving setting, where you have to investigate, discover, create, try and fail, iterate, gather data and perfect an actual product? Can I help students reflect on their day-to-day growth and their short-term goal setting as a motivational tool? I’m sure I can facilitate this by putting some good reflection tools in place. Let’s make this a New Year’s Resolution – I will help my students become motivated and reflective learners, and to track their own progress to make them feel the same sense of satisfaction my keyboarding students get.