A lot of teachers and parents who see the title of this post probably wonder how handwriting and reading problems could possibly be connected. You should know however, that a number of reading specialists are now using handwriting as a tool to help dyslexic children overcome the problems that are causing reading difficulties.
Phonics instruction is employed most often, but poor handwriting skills must be corrected first. That is necessary because the reading lessons are driven by handwriting. Students, even those in grade one, are expected to write on paper, everything that is presented during the reading lesson.
The student must learn to spell the sounds on paper as they learn to read them during each lesson. To keep up with the pace, they must learn to write fluently. The challenge to write it all down as it is presented by the teacher, is an important key to student success. The ability to write the sounds fluently indicates internalization has occurred.
Even first-grade children soon are able to write words and phrases, even sentences, after a single glance at the chalkboard. The student is no longer producing words by drawing one letter at a time. The connection between reading and handwriting, is fluency. Growing the two skills at the same time through correlated application makes all the difference.
We hope to share in this blog, stories of non-reading students who became readers in a few short months. And as the stories are told, you should be able to learn about the teaching techniques that made success possible.
Hello Sal,
Thanks for your comment and suggestion. The blog is new and has not attracted many readers yet. Do you feel an rss feed would help attract readers? I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with that world.
Hello Olli,
Thank you for your kind comment. A group of therapists has begun to use handwriting fluency as a means of dealing with dyslexia. The first step is to assess the handwriting ability. It is a very uncomfortable position in some ways because the findings tend to be an indictment of common practice in the schools.
The therapists are rapidly finding that the majority of children who are brought for reading help are unable to write the entire alphabet from memory, let alone write letters from memory at a rate of 40 letters-per-minute or higher.
Correct the lack of handwriting fluency, and the symptoms begin to dissipate rapidly as handwriting can now be used as the delivery mechanism for reading lessons. In these situations the reading lessons tend to be intensive phonics instruction with various programs. They are seeing great success. In one situation, a private school in the western part of the country, 100% of non-reading children of elementary age, where reading at or above grade level within a few months. And, in several cases ADHD was a concurrent diagnosis with dyslexia. Within a few weeks the attention problems had also disappeared.
It is becoming increasingly clear that one reason for the poor showing in literacy among schools, is a lack of physical language training that was a primary focus in early elementary grades three decades ago. The literacy rate has been falling steadily despite the constant increase in expenditures and numbers of “reading specialists” who don’t consider handwriting fluency.
Rand,
I’ve emailed Don Potter in Texas and suggested he join this blog. I hope he does, as he’s been very successful in remediating young students using the writing fluency concept.
BTW, there is a new term that intested folks should learn. It’s “haptics”, which refers to what we used to call “kinesthetic sense”, meaning the sensory feeling of motion we get when we move a body part. (Such as the hand when handwriting.
What a great post. I TOTALLY agree about the reading/writing thing for 6 year olds. Sofie (6 1/2) spends most of her day speaking Swiss German, but still refers to English as her ‘best’ language. Right now I think it still is, but she can read and write in English, and not Swiss German (which isn’t actually a written language anyway). However in the past 6 months I have seen her drifting more towards Swiss German, and even using the occasional Swiss word in place of an English one. I think in a year or so when she has learned to read/write in German, that will be her dominant language, despite only speaking English at home. But whatever she classes as her ‘best’ language, nothing will take away the fact she will be fluent in several, which is the whole point really.
I want to teach my Toddlers ABC’s but have been told not to do it untill age 3. I’m not sure why.
Is it bad to start early and will teaching them to recognize the letter A confuse them when they
start sounding out words?.
Hi Karolyn,
If the little ones are interested, I don’t think it would hurt to begin to teach the movements that will be used for making letters. However, there are very important considerations.
1. The kids may not have developed a preference for one hand over the other.
2. They need to execute the movements at a large size with arm movement with either hand or both.
3. They will most likely have trouble grasping a pencil or crayon, so avoid the use of those tools entirely.
4. Innate tendencies for movements that would produce strokes for letters, set the stage for creating bad habits if not closely monitored and carefully guided.
Virtually all little ones tend to touch close to the body and move away. That is bottom-up. They won’t perceive the difference between bottom-up and top-down movement without great exaggeration on your part as you teach. Our language reading pattern is top-down, left-to-right. The movements they use will become encoded in the motor system and those patterns can and will affect recognition of the letters in terms of reading them later on. This is particularly true of print letters because so many of the shapes are virtually the same except for movement directionality.
For example; b, d, p are essentially the same shape but oriented in different positions. The same is true of numerous other forms: M and W, n and u, E and 3, S and Z, f and t. When learning to read, many children confuse these letters because they did not learn to write them correctly. This leads to problems in reading skill development. Learning to write the forms correctly (top-down, left-to-right) creates perceptual differences between the shapes eliminating the potential for reading confusion later on.
The little ones live in a form-constant world. Things are what they are, not matter how they are oriented, so it is easy to see why they could could confuse the letters when shown a picture and asked to name the letter. They don’t really understand the directionality concepts; top, bottom, left, right, unless you invest time to teach those concepts directly and make sure they learn to make the letters correctly, using a top-down, left-to-right movement process.
You can avoid the use of a pencil or crayon by teaching the child to write large letters with the pointer finger in a cookie sheet spread with sand, corn starch or flour. If you have a chalkboard and jumbo chalk, you can probably teach the child to hold the chalk and make large letters on the board. (We shouldn’t hold a chalk as we do a pencil and the jumbo chalks just can’t be held like a pencil in little hands.) Teach them to hold the jumbo chalk between the thumb and the fingers (Chalk in palm).
Finally, there is the issue of attention. Learning how to build letters is probably a good way to improve the attention span, but will your three-year-old pay attention long enough to actually see and understand the start point and direction of movement you are teaching? You could address this issue by teaching and patterning basic strokes rather than letters initially. There are six basic movements (strokes) used for writing print letters and four used for cursive letters. You can teach the children many important concepts for written language using basic strokes instead of letters. Use downstrokes and slide-right strokes to draw rectangle shapes. Use slant strokes and slides to draw triangle shapes. Teach left-to-right progression by drawing several shapes aligned laterally. Teach spacing by drawing two triangles close together and space another pair apart from the first. You can teach tall and small the same way. Ask the child to draw a circle and you will probably see that the child starts and ends the movement at the bottom of the circle. Use a clock face to teach a 2 o’clock start point and counter-clock movement direction. Internalize the pattern by writing pairs, tall and small, etc. Teach counting too. Write one triangle, then two triangles then three. Write one tall down-stroke and then two, and then three, four, five. Creating the groups will be transfer of learning for the concept of spacing.
And, you can teach the children how to move fluently by making the strokes as they chant aloud; “tall” (as they touch at the top), “down” (as they move to make the stroke).
Looneytunesphonics,
According to a correspondent of mine who has taught reading for many years, virtually all children are ready go learn to write and read about the time of their fourth birthdays.
Another correspondent has stated that the acquisition of “finger gnosis” (the ability to tell which finger you touched while you touched on of the child’s fingers with his or her eyes shut) is necessary for learning to read and write. This ability usually is present by the age of four.
I personally don’t think any harm is done by trying to teach literacy “too young”, but if not yet ready, it may be a waste of time.