Touch Typing Courses For Children

Some of our courses are suitable for children from 7 years old and we have an AtoZ Keyboarding course for children in Reception year.

If you are worried that your child is too young or you are not sure which course is the right one for them, we suggest you give us a call so that we can advise you. We can also offer a 30-minute assessment with a senior tutor so we can carefully tailor the right course for your child. You can book this assessment by giving us a call.

Your child will need at least 10 lessons e.g., 10 hours of tuition. Some students will need more hours if they have an SpLD or are younger.

Perhaps your child needs to learn quickly so that they can start using their touch typing at school as soon as possible. In which case go for one of our Zoom holiday intensive courses or you can fast track the 10 Week Flexi-Time Home Course.

If they are not in a hurry, then perhaps choose the 10-week Flexi-Time Home Course, which sounds like a long time but it gives more time in between lessons to do some daily practice which helps to build confidence and speed.

If your child has a specific learning difference such as dyslexia, it may be better to choose a course such our Junior Dyslexia Rolling Course or our 10 Week Flexi-Time Home Course Plus+ which offers some face-to-face support from a tutor, or even one to one lessons. This course is also ideal if you have a very young child e.g. 7 years.

We recommend you give us a call if you are not sure and we also offer a 30-minute assessment lesson so that we can advise on the best course for your child.

You may be wondering how is my child going to fit this into their busy week? With our Flexi-Time Home Courses, they only have to practice for 10 minutes each day (60 minutes) in total which is achievable for most children.

All of our touch typing courses get great results because they are all tutor supported. However, learning to touch type takes time, so you need to bear this in mind. If you looking to book an intensive course for your child, they will learn to touch type the letters very quickly in just one week, but they will need to continue their practice once the course has finished to consolidate their learning and to improve on speed.

Our 10 week Flexi-Time Home Course builds their touch typing skill at a slighter slower pace with just one hour of practice each week which they can do in their own time leaving lots of time in between for additional practice. This means at the end of the 10 weeks; your child is more likely to have a great speed ready to use their skill for school.

Our 10 week Flexi-Time Home Course Plus+ and Zoom courses are ideal for those students that need a little bit of extra support, guidance and motivation face to face with a tutor, who are on hand to tailor and tweak the lessons for the needs of the student.

We specialise in helping many children with dyslexia and dyspraxia learn how to touch type. We suggest you give us a call to discuss your requirements so that we talk through the course options in more detail or feel free to browse through our selection of courses.

We also offer a 30-minute assessment so that we can choose the best course for your child.

Most parents will book either the 10 week Flexi-Time Home Course Plus+ which is two lessons on Zoom to start with, or a course of one-to-one lessons with a tutor.

We also have a remote Junior Dyslexia Rolling Course which will help your child to touch type at a relaxed pace where students aim to type for just 10 minutes each day. The lessons are easy to follow with on screen videos and instructions, and they will of course have their tutor to offer helpful and encouraging feedback each week by email.

With all of our courses, it’s not necessary to have spelling accuracy for this course although their spelling will improve as they learn to type by finger patterns.

You can start the course at any time.

Flexi-Time Home Courses: your child can start their course at any time and do their practice on any day at any time – as long as they complete their assigned lessons by the deadline day.

Intensive courses: these run during the school holidays (Easter, Summer and half terms) and most of our Zoom courses start at 9am and finish at 11am. We occasionally run PM sessions. If the timings do not work for you, just give us a call and we can see if we can offer you a private session.

• Once you have read the starter pack together with your child, you can log into our programme to get started. The programme includes easy to follow instructions on what to do and we have even uploaded ‘how to’ videos so you can follow along with finger positioning.
• Your tutor will set your child a specific number of lessons to complete each week which will take approximately one hour to complete. They can do the practice on any day at any time.
• You will be given a deadline day in the week when your child needs to have completed all of their lessons by. For example, if that day is a Monday, practice can be completed from Tuesday – Sunday, ready for the tutor to check the work online and give written feedback by email.
• The feedback will include information about accuracy and speed, any tricky keys and how to overcome those problems, any lessons that need to be repeated, what to do next and how to do it. The next set of lessons will be unlocked by your tutor.
• For parents: We always recommend that you take an interest in what your child is learning because encouragement from a parent always helps. You could even set up a motivational reward system at home.
• At the end of the course, their tutor will send you a final feedback and a certificate of their achievement.
• Our Flexi-Time Home Courses are designed as a continuous course, so if lessons are missed or your child has had to repeat some of the lessons, it may take longer than the allocated time.
• If this happens, we will notify you closer to the end of the course, suggesting that you enrol your child for some additional weeks and tutor feedback support, so that they can complete the course.
• Please note that the Dyslexia Junior Course is designed as a rolling course paid monthly, and there is no set finish date until they have finished the course.
• With our intensive courses, your child will have access to the programme for at least 6 months. Our Flexi-Time Home Courses offer access to the programme for 3 months.

Our aim is that your child finishes the course with a great accuracy and speed and also enjoys their touch typing journey. We hope that they can use their wonderful new skill to help them get through their work faster at school and also use this skill for their future careers.

For older children on the flexi-time courses, we ask students to complete an initial baseline test so we can see their current typing style/speed. We then monitor their progress with the aim to improve on their initial speed and accuracy. We set type tests throughout the programme and at the end of the course. These results are included on their end of course certificate.

Final speed will depend on a number of factors, the main ones being natural ability, age and also how much practice your child does. Speed will increase naturally the more a person practices and so we see speeds go up towards the end of the course. We do set certain speed exercises throughout the course, and we hope that most students finish the course with at least a speed of 30wpm. Many of our students finish with speeds in excess of this.

Yes, you can. If you start with our 10-week Flexi-Time Home Course and you decide you want to fast track your course or perhaps add in one or two Zoom sessions, that’s not a problem, just give us a call. If your child is doing the 10 Week Flexi-Time Home Course, which is perhaps too challenging for them, we can switch them to our Junior Dyslexia course. That doesn’t mean they have to start at the beginning. We can start them at a point that is right for them. Conversely if they are progressing well, we can change them to a more challenging lesson plan. Your child’s tutor will be monitoring their progress throughout.

Learning to touch type on your own isn’t easy. In fact, 80% of our customers have tried to learn on their own and failed. Learning something new takes a lot of dedication and self-motivation. That’s why having a tutor on hand to guide and motivate you through the course really helps. They are there to spot any problems, give advice, and sometimes give a little nudge where necessary and offer words of encouragement. Too often when people are learning on their own, it’s too easy just to give up. With our courses, your child won’t give up, they will finish the course as a brilliant touch typist!

With our Flexi-Time Home Courses, our tutors will be looking at your child’s typing stats each week, and doing playbacks of their real keystrokes so they can see first hand what their typing looks like so they can easily spot any problems. They will then collate that information and write a summary of their results by email, focusing on offering words of encouragement and an outline of what they need to do and how to do it. These step by step instructions means that your child can complete their lessons with confidence.

With our intensive courses, your tutor will be live in the session with your child, demonstrating what they need to do as well as give your child valuable tips and tricks so that they achieve a fantastic final result.

All of our tutors are ‘real’ human beings – not bots! Our tutors are all ages and nationalities and come from different backgrounds. They can touch type proficiently – some over 100wpm! Some of our tutors are teachers, some work in business and others are university students that learnt how to touch type with us many years previously. The one thing we all have in common is that we are passionate about teaching children this wonderful life skill. We really care about what we do and go out of our way to ensure your child gets the very best out of the course.

Unfortunately, we do not offer our courses without tutor support.

With our tutor supported courses, we hope that doesn’t happen because lessons are designed around the needs of your child. If you do find this a problem, just let us know. The last thing we want is for your child to feel pressured or frustrated with their typing. Just get in touch with us by phone or email and let’s try and work out what they problem is and how we can overcome that problem. There are lots of different things we can do to make it better.

You will need a laptop/computer with an internet connection. For our intensive courses, the programme will not currently work on a Chromebook or ipad. For our flexi-time courses, these are fine to use.

We recommend that you use the keyboard that you are most familiar with. Sometimes it is easier to type on a separate keyboard with ‘clunky’ keys as the key presses are more forgiving. The flat ‘chicklet’ keys are more sensitive. You can always purchase a keyboard on Amazon for under £10 – we can send you a link for this.

If you are using an ipad with a Bluetooth keyboard, please make sure the keyboard is full sized. In other words, the keys are full sized, even if the keyboard is slightly more compact. We wouldn’t recommend a smaller keyboard for adult hands.