Challenge your students to track their own improvements in typing speed and accuracy. Instruct your students to type a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet such as, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Students can use the second hand on the classroom clock to write down the time they began and ended the sentence. Repeat this assignment once each week. Students should graph their times and see improvements each week.
Sixth-grade students love to listen to music. Greet them at the beginning of the hour by playing one of their favorite songs over the sound system. Students will be intrigued and motivated to hear their song playing in the classroom. Once settled in, instruct students to listen to the lyrics of the song again and type the first word of each sentence they hear. Pause the music periodically to reduce the risk of frustration.
Students love to laugh. Showcase their humor and practice typing skills through repetition using a class story. Begin the class period by creating a fictitious character who constantly gets himself into precarious situations. Students will want to have input on this story as well. When you can see the class is interested and enjoying the humor of this character, instruct each student to type a short paragraph detailing another problem this character encounters. After enough time has passed for each paragraph to be typed, ring a bell to signal that each student must move to the computer on his right. At this new computer, each student will retype the same paragraph under the text already on the screen. Each student will type their paragraph on all the computers in the room, thereby creating a lengthy class story. When the students have reached their original computer, read the story together and share a good laugh.
Many students love the unpredictable humor of a mad lib. Cut an interesting article from a newspaper or magazine. Circle one or two words from each sentence. The parts of speech of the circled words should be varied. Label the part of speech of each circled word. When class begins, read only the parts of speech of each circled word. The students must type the first word that comes to mind fitting that part of speech. When the list is completed, read the story and ask for various students to fill in the blanks with the words they chose.