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Links keyboard awareness to early literacy
 The new edition of First Keys develops keyboard skills through text matching, spelling and word blends from picture cues.
Activities:
The program has six levels of activity with a very flexible set of options.
Initial Letter: Match a letter key to the initial letter of a picture prompt.
Match the text: Type in the whole word or phrase to match the text.
Build the Text: Text and picture appears, but on the first input the remaining text disappears. The student has as long as they want to look before pressing the first key.
 Fill the Gaps: Show the picture and text, but with gaps missing in the text. These gaps may be fixed letters, vowels or letter blends such as 'sh', 'ch', 'ough' etc. The teacher can store their own lists of missing letters.
Look Cover Spell: See the picture and text. After a time (which can be adjusted to need) the whole word disappears and the student must type it in.
Spell from Picture: Here the word is not seen at all and the student must type in the word, given only the picture.
Graphics:
 The program comes with an extensive range of images which include improved versions of the graphics in First Keys 1 as well as photographs and additional images to illustrate new activity possibilities. It is easy to add your own images and photos and the program accepts a wide range of file formats.
The program is whiteboard friendly and provides a very useful tool to support the literacy strategy.
A structured approach to word level work.
Cloze activities, missing words and letter blends can be structured for word level work in the literacy strategy. Use pictures from your reading scheme to support other texts.
Keyboard:
 The program shows the task with an image of the keyboard.
The keyboard can show the letters 'qwerty' or alphabetically. Numbers and space bar can be shown optionally.
Letters can be shown upper or lower case and you can choose the font.
The program works by the student pressing the appropriate keys on the keyboard, or by clicking with a mouse on the one shown on-screen. It is also possible to switch off the on-screen keyboard display.
There are visual prompts highlighting the key to press. The point at which prompts 'cut in' can be adjusted. The prompt can be shown as a highlight on the key, or as a 'picture' related to the letter (e.g an apple on the 'a' key).
 Tasks:
A task consists of a set of words or phrases.
The program takes these in turn and presents them to the student using the activity chosen. The order of the words or phrases can be in the order they were input, alphabetical, or random.
It is possible to use a series of activities so that the student can extend learning. For instance a task may be set to first 'Match the Text' then follow immediately with 'Build the Text'.
Platform: Windows
Format: CD
Scottish Primary Key Stage: P1 to P2
Price: £42.00
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