Sixth Grade
Beginning Keyboarding

Learning to keyboard properly is critical for all students.  Students will learn and practice correct finger placement on the keyboard.  The alphabetic keyboard is introduced.  Students will practice activities in word processing software to become familiar with it.
What can you do to help?  As your child learns the proper technique for keyboarding, be sure to reinforce it at home.  Your child should know the correct placement of the hands and which finger is used to reach the key.  Once your child has finished the course, he should continue practicing by copying a page in their favorite book, newspaper, etc.  Practice will bring about faster speed and better accuracy levels, if done properly.  Make practice sessions short and fun!!  For a challenge, tape a piece of paper or folder to the top of the keyboard and have your child place their hands underneath it.  You can test if they know the location of the keys without looking.

Seventh Grade
Computers

Students will continue to increase their keyboarding skills using speed, accuracy, and concentration drills.  The focus of this course is to learn the correct formatting of school and personal documents including tables, letters, reports, and PowerPoint presentations. Previous keyboarding experience is recommended, but this course will be modified for those students that have not had any keyboarding experience.

Students can also take Computer Applications in eighth grade.

Eighth Grade
Computer Applications

A previous course in keyboarding is recommended.

Students will continue to increase their keyboarding skills using speed, accuracy, and concentration drills.  Students will be using the Microsoft Office Suite.  Desktop publishing skills will be introduced as students complete projects.  Students will work with Excel to see how to organize numerical values in spreadsheets.  School and personal documents will be produced using Microsoft Word.  PowerPoint will be used to create multimedia presentations.