Purpose: To help students compose original documents that require critical thinking skills and reinforce touch type practice and proper keyboarding technique.
Procedure: Assign one of the following topics or allow students to choose their own. Set a time limit (you decide) and then instruct students to use their best keyboarding technique while composing their paragraphs. Students can be as serious or humorous and creative as they want to be.
- Pretend that you are a parent talking to a child. Explain ten things that you would want them to know about life.
- A genie has just told you that you can trade places with anyone in the world for an hour. Who would you absolutely NOT want to trade places with? Why?
- If you were governor of a state that bordered an ocean, what would you do to protect the ocean from pollution?
- If the teacher left you in charge of the class for an entire week, how would you plan your week? You will be observed and evaluated just as a teacher is.
- If you could add one day to every week, what would you name that day and why? What would you use that day for?
- A new law has been passed to outlaw online gaming, social media and YouTube. You must live by the law. List ten things you would do instead.
KeyMaster Variation: Before the students begin their exercise, ask them to choose 5 keys on their KeyMaster Keyboard that have recently been taught or that need reinforcement and ask them to blank out those keys during the exercise.
Time & Materials: Word processing software and one class period.
Contributor: Adapted from Tonya Skinner, http://lessonplans.btskin
Download this Lesson Plan as a PDF Here: Composing at the Keyboard Lesson Plan
Visit our Keyboarding Classroom Activities page for more classroom ready resources!