Creative Writing and Keyboarding Games

The following is a description of a class I'll be offering to homeschoolers this spring at the Huckleberry Center for Creative Learning in Valencia, California.  All classes for the spring semester begin the week of  February 7, 2011 and end June 2, 2011.  If you have questions regarding registration, please visit:  www.hucklc.org.  Huck is a vendor for several area charter schools.  

This class will be on Mondays from 12:30-2pm.

Creative Writing and Keyboarding Games

Ages 9-11

Are you the kind of typist who has to hunt and peck for every letter?  Slow and frustrating isn’t it?  We all know the value of computer keyboarding skills, but not everyone realizes how much proper keyboarding technique and high typing speeds improve your writing skills.  Word processors are essential to writing in our internet age and revision (the key to all strong writing) happens far more often if students can type as fast they think.  So, why don’t all students have these skills?  Well, “Learn to Type” computer software can get boring very fast.  This class will teach students proper QWERTY keyboarding skills through games and creative writing!  We’ll learn proper finger placement through games like “Typing Football,” “Story Starters,” “Keyboard Bingo” “Dinosaur Duels,” “Keyboarding Baseball,” “Simon Says,” and many others.  We won’t however, just be giving our fingers a good workout, we’ll be stretching our creative writing muscles as well as we learn how to craft a well organized story.  We’ll use plot outlines and story-idea maps to help us sketch outlines of our stories and then we’ll create interesting characters and settings to keep our readers enthralled.  Our big project for the class will be compiling a portfolio of each student’s best stories to show our friends at Huck during the End of Semester show!  This is a wonderful creative writing opportunity for students and will allow them to pick up those all in important typing skills as well.  For students to write with ease, they really need to be able to type as fast as think.  This class will get students on the road to improving these essential skills.

Homework:  Regular Typing Practice (15 minutes/day) & Short Story Writing (1 hour/week)

Materials Fees:  $20

Tuition:  $210 (For details see www.hucklc.org)