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Edutopia
How to Teach Handwriting—and Why It Matters
Teaching young students how to write by hand before moving on to keyboarding can help improve their reading fluency as well.
By Brooke MacKenzie
July 2, 2019
Technology is an undeniable fact of everyday life and can support
students’ learning. But there are limits to that: Completely replacing
handwriting instruction with keyboarding instruction in elementary
school can be detrimental to students’ literacy acquisition. Why are
handwriting and letter formation so important?
Research has demonstrated a correlation between letter-naming and
letter-writing fluency, and a relationship between letter-naming
fluency and successful reading development. There’s a strong connection
between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain—as students
learn to better write the critical features of letters, they also learn
to recognize them more fluently. This recognition of letters leads to
greater letter-writing fluency, which leads to greater overall reading
development.
In an article summarizing several studies on handwriting and learning,
the writer Maria Konnikova notes, “Not only do we learn letters better
when we commit them to memory through writing, memory and learning
ability in general may benefit.” When students write letters manually,
they learn them more effectively. Switching to keyboarding before
students have developed handwriting skills may reduce their ability to
recognize letters. Konnikova also cites a study that found that
students who wrote by hand—as opposed to on a keyboard—were able to
generate more ideas. Students with better handwriting demonstrated
“increased overall activation in the reading and writing networks” of
the brain.
HOW TO TEACH HANDWRITING
Learning how to print is a developmentally appropriate first step of
handwriting instruction for students in grades pre-K to 2, in terms of
their fine motor skills. Handwriting instruction does not require a big
time investment: Brief lessons and frequent feedback for students can
be incorporated in all areas of the curriculum throughout the school
day.
There are four main aspects of handwriting instruction: pencil grasp, formation, legibility, and pacing.
Pencil grasp: When it comes to how a child holds a pencil, there are
correct and incorrect grasps. The correct grasps—in which the index
finger and thumb hold the pencil against the middle finger—result in
comfortable and efficient handwriting, while incorrect grasps can cause
poor letter formation and fatigue.
A student with a poor pencil grasp may benefit from using tools such as
a pencil grip or from wrapping a rubber band around the ring finger and
pinkie—not too tightly!—to fold them against the hand. You can also
teach the “pinch and flip” trick: The student places the pencil with
the writing end facing her, pinches the pencil between the thumb and
index finger, and flips the pencil into the correct position.
Formation: This refers to how a student goes about forming letters.
Straight lines are easier for students to write than curved ones, so
it’s developmentally appropriate to teach students to write capital
letters before moving on to lowercase ones.
It’s critical that handwriting instruction be integrated with phonics
instruction: As students learn how to write the letters, they should
also be learning and practicing the sounds that the letters make.
Handwriting and dictation activities are the cornerstone of any
multisensory phonics instruction program, as requiring students to
consistently practice forming the letters while connecting them to
sounds will serve to better embed phonics concepts in the brain.
For students who struggle with letter formation, explicit instruction
is particularly important. Students should be taught to start their
letters at the top (or middle, as is the case with some lowercase
letters), and use continuous strokes as much as possible. Some letters
will require them to lift up their pencils, and they should be taught
when to do this. Using lined paper is helpful, as is giving students a
variety of visual aids: arrow cues for stroke direction, dots for
starting points, dotted letters for tracing, etc. Students also benefit
from “skywriting” letters—tracing letters in the air with an index
finger while holding their arm straight out.
The letters b, d, p, and q are often confused by younger students.
Teaching the correct formation of these letters can help diminish the
confusion, as they have different starting points—b, for instance,
starts from the top, whereas d starts in the middle. Internalizing the
motor patterns for these letters can help make recognition more
automatic.
Legibility: An important factor impacting legibility is spacing between
words. It’s helpful to encourage students to use a “finger space”
between words—right-handed students can put an index finger on the line
after one word before writing the next one. This technique doesn’t work
for left-handed students, who will benefit from using a narrow tongue
depressor as a spacing tool.
Pacing: If students are using an appropriate pencil grasp and forming
letters correctly, that will often solve any pacing challenges. Another
factor to consider when looking at pacing is the press: Students should
not be pressing the pencil down on the paper too hard as they write
because doing so can lead to writing fatigue and a greatly reduced rate
of letter production. But if they press too lightly, it can be a sign
of weak muscles or inappropriate pencil grasp. Encourage students to
write with a variety of materials (markers, short pencils, crayons,
erasable markers on whiteboards) to help them adjust how hard they
press.
School days are packed with instructional priorities, and it can be
easy to let handwriting fall by the wayside. However, with just a few
minutes a day, students’ letter formation skills can improve, leading
to positive outcomes for overall literacy development.
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