The iPad onscreen keyboard blocks most of the lower half of the screen. Here's a way to make that keyboard smaller, similar to the iPhone keyboard size.
Tap and hold the key in the bottom, right corner of the keyboard. It has a down arrow and a small keyboard icon on it.
When the white bubble with the word “Floating” appears, slide your finger onto the bubble and then release when the bubble turns blue. A smaller version of the keyboard appears.
Tap and hold the gray bar below the space bar to drag the keyboard to a new position onscreen.
You can use the Swipe to Type (also called Slide to Type) feature in this mode, just like on the iPhone. Instead of typing each individual character, you spell by sliding your finger over the keys, lifting your finger when you’ve swiped all the letters in the word. As you type, you'll see suggestions you can tap if the correct word appears. If you lift your finger without choosing a suggestion, your device will “guess” the word you've typed—usually correctly. Sometimes, though, you'll have to tap individual keys to get the word you want.
Just like on the iPhone, you can use the space bar to position the cursor to make corrections. Tap and hold the space bar until the letters go blank. Then, slide your finger through your text to select the correct position and then release.
To revert to the normal size keyboard, drag the gray bar (below the space bar) off the bottom of the screen and hold briefly. This may take a little practice.