Teaching to type program

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Hi everyone,
can recommend a teaching to type program for my 11 year old non-verbal child? We aren't really sure if she can read as she doesn't have any form of communication, but I just know that she can be taught with the right program. School isnt helping much as they are too lazy to give her a go.
Janine

We used tux typing 2 for children and it was a slow but prosperous adventure. It's freeware so you don't have to spend money to find out if it works in your situation.

Well, I unfortunately dont have any advice for teaching your child to type, but before you do that, you may want to make sure your child understands that there is a connection between symbols and their real life counterparts. Words are symbols that represent real life things. For example 'food' is just 4 letters, but it represents something that you can pick up and eat. Prior to teaching your child to type, you must first teach them that symbols represent items. After that you can then start teaching your child simple words and show her how to type them out.

You might want to start off with something called PECS. It is an acronym for Picture Exchange Communication System. Basically it is just pictures with words on them that you cut out and use for communication. Its basically like sign language, but with pictures instead of hand signals. If you want more information, try googling PECS. You will find plenty of information on there.

Also, welcome to the web site. You may want to browse some of the other posts and see if you find them helpful. And feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

UltraKey has been the de facto standard in typing since computers were introduced in schools (say, late 80's and early 90's), and works on a large variety of Windows and Macintosh systems. I bet you could find a copy real cheap on eBay or something.

Thanks Tracker,
Stef has been using PECS for the past 6 years and the cards we use at home have both the words and pictures. The special school is really slack though and has not moved with her development (mainly due to shortages of Speech Therapists). Stef does use a lot of makiton as well. She has had a big exposure to reading at mainstream school and really takes notice when we read to her. There is no way of telling if she can read herself but she certainly looks at books, turns the pages slowly and in the right order.
Our challenge is getting whether she recognises a connection between the word and the picture and then teaching her the keyboard skills. After being on here though, I realise that there are a lot of non-verbal people who can in fact learn to type and to communicate using the keyboard, so where there is hope there is the determination to help my beautiful girl as much as I possibly can. Thats my job!

Well its good that she is familiar with PECS. I would consider that a form of communication

In any case, the only thing I could suggest is spending some time teaching her simple nouns and relating them to real life things. For example, show her how to type 'food' or 'candy', and then give her some candy. If she want's more, she has to type it herself. Then repeat with other words, getting more specific for different things.

I would wait to do verbs and adjectives until she is fine with nouns. Verbs are hard to give examples of, and hard to relate, but nouns are fairly easy to show and connect. Best to start simple for good results.