Handwriting

The Way to Teach It

Rosemary Sassoon

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781446229354
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Méthodes pédagogiques pour la lecture

`I found this a fascinating book to read, I could identify with my time at school when I would often write with my paper almost in at right angles to my body because I found this comfortable, and the teacher?s insistence that the paper be "straight" in front of me. This then made me twist my body into a ridiculous shape, and would sometimes result in punishment for not "sitting on the chair correctly"….if only the teacher had understood the same principles as Rosemary Sassoon, who in this book emphasizes "flexibility and clear thinking about essential issues, rather than to impose solutions? - Spare-Chair

` Handwriting: The Way to Teach It should be required reading wherever Primary school teachers are trained, then perhaps there would be fewer young people still struggling to communicate in legible writing in Secondary school and later life? - Handwriting Today

`This is a comprehensive textbook, and an extremely accessible and practical guide which should be on the bookshelf of every practitioner. I recommend it highly? - Jeni Riley, Head of Early Childhood and Primary Education, Institute of Education, University of London

This book is an essential classroom guide to the teaching of handwriting. It covers all aspects of the subject: from whole-school planning, to classroom management and the teaching of letters in a highly illustrated and practical sequence; and from initial letter forms through to joined writing. The author presents many examples and imaginative ideas to make learning to write more effective and interesting for children and for teachers. This Second Edition includes material on problems which children can have with handwriting, and how to diagnose and remedy them.

The author offers strategies for better teaching, and her aim throughout the book is to encourage flexibility and clear thinking about essential issues, rather than to impose solutions.

PART 1

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Planning handwriting across the whole school

This book provides a practical and innovative approach to the teaching of handwriting. Its key is the belief that the attitudes and methods of teachers are the vital ingredients in children’s handwriting success – far more important than the choice of any particular handwriting model. It is particularly crucial that all the teachers in a school are in agreement about the teaching approach.
With this in mind, the first part of the book provides a flexible planning ‘kit’ to help you and your school develop and implement your own coherent policy. These suggestions can be used alongside any particular handwriting system already in use, but will provide a coherent action plan for those who have not yet started to formulate a systematic policy for themselves.

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1 The priority for handwriting in the curriculum

What is learned about handwriting in the early days at school will affect children for many years to come. Providing enough priority is given to skill training, and handwriting is taught systematically but imaginatively from the start of formal teaching, most children should learn quite easily. As there has been so little guidance on how to teach handwriting for so long, it has now become accepted that it is a problem to teach and to learn. This book suggests that informed and confident teachers should be able to teach the basic movement of letters quite quickly and in such a way that many of the problems that hold children back later on should never occur. This is not a matter of more resources or teaching time, but using them at the right time and in the right way.

Each school will have to decide how to arrange the curriculum to ensure that enough time is allotted for skill training, particularly in the first year of schooling. The more thoroughly handwriting is taught at the beginning the less time will be necessary later on.

2 The relationship between the skill of handwriting and other subjects

In recent years it has been fashionable to allow children to try to copy letters and to record their thoughts from almost their first day at school. The attitude has been to let them play with letters and not correct or teach anything that might inhibit them from expressing their creativity. This may sound delightful, indeed young children’s pre-school scribbles are fun for all concerned, but the problems that result from letting this playful attitude to letters continue for too long are only too obvious in our classrooms. Once children can write as much as the letters of their own names, they need to be taught the correct movement of each letter. If this is not done, incorrect movements become habits that are progressively more difficult to alter.

Each school has to decide how to introduce the vital movement training quickly enough so that the most able children do not become frustrated. For those who have not yet started to write, it is easier to give a good foundation within a relatively short time. This can be done through the letter-family technique. This allows a vocabulary of short words to be built up as each group of letters is learned. The temptation to let children try to write down their ‘news’ each day should be resisted until all the letters can be written with a correct movement in their basic form. Problems can arise with early developers (and their parents). These children are most at risk as they often learn to write at home and may need immediate remedial help to correct movement faults. Their parents will need an explanation, otherwise they may feel that their children are being held back. The children also will need careful handling. They may be proud of their skill, thinking that they have already mastered handwriting.

The fine balance between the standard expected in the ‘skill’ handwriting class, and in creative writing also needs discussion. It is unrealistic to expect the same level of handwriting when the children’s entire concentration is on the letterforms (whether at five or ten years old), and when content and perhaps spelling are uppermost in their minds.

Movement of letters could be corrected in the same way (and at the same time) as spelling.

Most schools already have a realistic outlook on the difference in general quality that might be involved, but what about movement faults? Should they be treated like spelling mistakes and have a correction suggested at the end of a piece of writing? If so, how often can this be done without the risk of inhibiting written expression? Some kind of reminder is however essential to reinforce the correct movement.

3 When to introduce handwriting in the reception class

Not all children may be ready to write when they start school. On the other hand there are dangers in leaving children to experiment for too long on their own. These were explained in the last section. Each school must take its own decision about the right time to begin formal teaching. In some districts the majority of pupils may have had pre-school experience. If they are lucky most children may already have gone through the pre-writing stages and have the capacity to start right away on letters. They may already be used to sitting quietly for a short time to concentrate on a specific task; until this happens little can be achieved. Other schools may have a majority of children with little graphic experience, so that few of the necessary skills required for what is a undoubtedly a difficult task will have been developed. Even for these children a new and more positive attitude to handwriting might be of benefit. In recent years it has been thought in some way wrong to get young children to sit down and learn a skill. The satisfaction of completing a small but suitable task seems to have been forgotten. Handwriting can give this kind of satisfaction, if the suggested systematic method is carried out in an imaginative way and divided into suitably short and reassuringly repetitive lessons.

Pre-writing patterns can help if they are carefully taught, but perhaps the very best way to foster the skills needed for handwriting is actually to begin to teach the simplest letters as early as possible in a formal teaching situation. Little tension is involved when the need for spelling is removed by using patterns of letters rather than words. The necessary distinction between drawing and writing can begin to be established at the same time.

The opposing attitude is that if children are taught to write too young, at too early a stage of their development, they will soon become discouraged by the inadequacy of their own letters. This warning is important and should not be ignored. Those most at risk of discouragement are children who are particularly clumsy. These children will certainly need more encouragement than their peers. It must be understood by everyone in the school that writing may always be a problem for some children, however much help they receive. With that understanding, praise can be given instead of criticism for the extra effort involved. It may be better to foster the necessary graphic skills slowly through graduated experience with letters, than to delay all writing in the hope that skills will develop on their own. Word processors can be magical for young children, but it would be sad if computers were used as an excuse to delay teaching handwriting. Their function should be to take some of the pressure off young children while they develop their skills, or while they tackle specific handwriting and spelling problems.

4 The choice of a handwriting model

The choice of a particular handwriting model must be a whole school decision. First of all there needs to be discussion about whether to have a strict model at all, or to adopt a more liberal attitude to letters. Everyone involved needs to be happy about what they will all have to teach. It must be remembered that at first it may be difficult for some people to change from any other accustomed model.

Four slightly different handwriting models are provided in this book (see pages 6–9). They involve different slants and proportions, as well as alternative forms of some letters. It will not matter if some people dislike some or even all of the letters proposed, because their purpose is to provoke informed discussion about what is essential to teach and what is not. None of them are intended to be models that should be slavishly copied. They illustrate different concepts of letters, and are open to the discussion and criticism that any model should be afforded. Letterforms, even very simple basic ones, are a very personal matter; what one person likes the next may hate. Letters are products of our minds and bodies and reflect our tastes and personalities. Any controversy is welcome in that it supports the underlying purpose of these ‘multiple models’, which is to suggest that children also perceive and produce the proportions and slant of letters in personal and individual ways from very early on. Perhaps these preferences should be tolerated or even encouraged so that all the teaching emphasis can be placed on the vital training of the correct movements of basic letters, rather than close adherence...