Paper Placement
A recent blog came my way about children with left-hand dominance being forced to use their right hand. I hope this is not a practice in the United States, but the article reminded me of a related problem.
Teachers are generally in elementary classrooms with no prior preparation to teach handwriting. They place paper on desks straight up, directly in front of each child and parallel to their desks.
Right-handers manage better than left-handers, although paper should be placed to their right and slanted a little. Left-handers do not do so well. Too often they hook their wrists to accommodate paper placement that should have been placed to the left and tilted. The child should be able to sit straight and be able to see the writing without twisting the wrist. He or she would then be pulling downstrokes toward the elbow with no danger of smudging the writing or a drawing.
Also, please see Left-Handed Flop Drop
Tips to Fix Your Handwriting
Just posted to YouTube: Tips to Fix Your Handwriting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_F7FqCe6To
More videos are in the works that I hope will be helpful.
Pre-Writing Activity
The goal for handwriting is to develop fluency, to be able to write legibly at age-appropriate speed. It is a skill that we need until such time that technology proves it is no longer useful. That may or may not happen because of a human desire to put communicative marks on a surface.
Handwriting is a physical skill as well as a mental one. Fluency, writing clearly at satisfactory speed, requires a relaxed hand.
The first pre-writing activities are designed to develop the muscles in fingers and hands so that they can hold writing tools productively. The index finger controls the writing tool for maximum fluency. Use the term, “writing finger” as a reminder.
1) Plant a garden. For flowers choose nasturtium seeds, sweet peas, or any flower seeds of about that size. For vegetables, beans and squash seeds are the right size. Use the writing finger to poke a hole in the ground. Pick up a seed with the writing finger and thumb and put it in its hole. Cover the seed with a little dirt.
2) Use tweezers to pick up small objects, scraps of paper, beads, kernels of corn, etc. The tweezers are squeezed with writing finger and thumb. Place the objects in a jar or box, or arrange them in a design on a table.
3) Pin up pictures with clothespins, the kind that opens with a squeeze of writing finger and thumb. Just string a line between two chairs or in any convenient space.
4) Tear up paper into about two inches squares (colored tissue is nice). Then create a collage: You will need a small saucer for glue and a base for the collage such as construction paper. Twist a square of paper around the eraser end of a pencil, remove it from the pencil, dip it in a little glue and place it on the base. Repeat until you have the image you want. Of course, the young artist can add some drawing, pictures he or she has cut out, or torn, colored paper.
5) Make little sculptures with play doh. Or try Floam, a great product. It is clean and colorful, and can be used over and over.
6) Scatter small objects around, beads, pebbles, pennies, even chocolate kisses. Pick up each one with writing finger and thumb, and place it in a jar or box.
7) Finger exercises:
Press the tips of fingers together. Release pressure and repeat.
Press the tips of fingers on a table, release the pressure and press again.
Touch the thumbs to the index finger, the middle finger, the ring finger, the pinkie, and then go back: The thumb touches pinkie, ring finger, middle finger and index finger. Repeat.
The next pre-writing activities build rhythmic movement, and can be practiced along with the first.
1) Let a child dance to a favorite tune(s).
2) Play with a toy drum, or allow a child to bang on a bare surface with an old spoon.
3) Play background music while a child scribbles on a large piece of paper. If the child is sitting at a table, provide smaller paper. The hand and fingers control the scribbles when sitting. When a child stands the hand and fingers are stationery, and whole arm movement is more natural.
Remember, tiny hands need tools that fit them. Cut or break crayons in half. Cut pencils into short pieces, or use golf pencils if you can find them. Break chalk. Balance of the tool is critical to a good, relaxed pen hold.
4) This one is for a chalkboard if you have one. Use broken chalk. The short tool is best suited for small hands. Cut a small square from an old sponge; dampen it. Place the sponge in the palm of the child’s hand. It’s held there with the ring finger and pinkie. The writing finger and thumb hold the chalk. The middle finger is a helper. Now the child can scribble, draw, erase and draw again.
A relaxed writing hand has an open palm. Short chalk is far easier for a little hand to manage than full sized pieces.
The third pre-writing activity leads the way to lowercase letter and numeral formation. The focus is on lowercase letters because we use them most, and because the shapes are simpler and easier to form.
We start with patterns because they are easier to form than letters. Encourage children to play with the patterns, making drawings out of them. Samples follow the patterns, but let child imaginations run free.
1) This is the first pattern:
The focus is on the downstroke: pull the line down and let it drift up. This pattern develops consistent letter size, slant and spacing. Talk or sing while you practice, and down and down and down and down; it helps to keep the rhythmic movement.
Does the pattern remind you of anything? Can you draw a face and put spiky hair on its head?
2) This is the next pattern:
The movement is counterclockwise. It is same as half of the lowercase alphabet, rearranged here so you can better see the movement relationship to the letters. Of course, the letters you see here are italic, but you will find the same general stroke directions in print-script and some conventional cursive, so all three patterns shown here will help other alphabet models.
3) This is the third pattern:
It moves clockwise, the same as these letters:
Just six letters are left. Practice them with the first pattern.
When learning a new letter,start with a pattern as a warmup. The child should talk as the pencil moves through the letter. It helps to implant the shape into motor memory. For example, write the second pattern saying, “down, bounce up, down, bounce up, down, bounce up and down.” Write an ‘a’ saying, “over, down, bounce up and down and.
Here are some ways to play with the shapes. Children can use the shapes to make their own images.
Speaking, chanting, singing, all implant letter formations into motor memory.
2) Stand and pretend there is a plane or bird in your hand. Pick a spot on your left. Start there and swoop down and over and down, moving to the right. Adapt this to learning letters.
3) Practice writing patterns and letters in sand, rice, finger paint, and for a special treat use chocolate pudding. Shaving cream is nice because clean-up is easy. Write on anything. Write in the steam on a bathroom mirror. Use a stick or writing finger to write in beach sand or in mud.
4) Practice writing with the eyes closed. It’s fun and a great way to feel the all-important movement.
Be inspired! Think of new ways to have fun with pre-writing play.
Why Cursive Doesn’t Work
Advocates of the cursive that joins all lowercase letters within words say it helps fine motor skills. That’s not what I see in recent media images of children practicing their cursive, some even winners of handwriting contests! Students are hunched over with tense, dysfunctional pencil holds. Dysfunctional posture does not work for any skill that needs fluency, not for piano playing, not for carpentry, not for soccer, not for handwriting.
Something’s missing! Early in the 20th century and before, American children were taught whole arm movement. They sat upright, moved their arms from the joint where arm meets shoulder. To be specific, it is the glenohumeral joint that is between the humerus (large bone of arm) and the glenoid fossa of the scapula (shoulder blade). Their hands and fingers were stationary, with only the tips, the distal phalanges of their ring and little fingers touching the desk or paper.
Try it. The posture allows one to easily join letters from the left side of a page until one runs out of paper. it’s easiest when standing at a whiteboard. To my knowledge this posture is no longer taught.
Now, we write with movement that is in our fingers and hands, with the ulnar side of the hand riding along on the writing surface. This makes joining every lowercase letter in words difficult. The result is the contorted postures we see in those images where writing is slow and fluency is lost.
Solution! Use the italic method for basic and cursive. Letter formations fit natural hand/finger movement. Good fine motor skills can develop for legibility at age-appropriate speed.
WHEN CURSIVE DOESN’T WORK
Handwriting is a physical skill. It is the only physical skill that is taught and learned in two diverse ways. Play a saxophone, play soccer; name any other physical skill and there is just one way to do it. Once the basics are learned, the individual will add his or her own style, but that’s not a method change.
Of all that has been written about whether or not cursive should continue to be taught, this one article stands out: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/cursive-handwriting-philip-ball/. Philip Ball makes no “factual” reference to research that proves cursive is beneficial to the workings of our brains. Such references, often made, are misquotes. In actuality, the only thing that has been determined is that writing by hand, regardless of method, improves cognition.
A picture is worth 1,000 words, so here’s why it’s a bad idea to teach two methods. Please look carefully at the little arrows. They show all the movement changes that a child must learn. As an initial guide just a few letters are colored orange. You are encouraged to look for other differences. In essence, children must unlearn stroke sequence, direction, and letter shapes that have been implanted in their earliest years, and then learn another alphabet, all for the one physical skill of handwriting.
The two alphabets are generic. You may know some variants of shape and formation. One program teaches the cursive as upright; another teaches a slanted basic alphabet, but the child still must learn new shapes and movements.
If older students and adults revert to what they first learned, and write a hybrid print script, is it not a natural result?
Here is a solution, the italic method. The youngest child learns the basic italic alphabet. With no changes of stroke direction and shape, the basic letters become cursive italic. Most joins simply drift up or over to a following letter. Learning this skill is simplified. As one’s individual style develops, modification will occur.
We Are Always Learning
I am beginning to grasp a piece of the controversy that is driving manuscript, or cursive, or keyboard instruction in schools.
I am a self-taught italic handwriting instructor. I still work with italic because I believe in the success of the method. When I first started to teach I became aware of a test of shapes for admission of young children to the school. I did not understand. Nearly 40 years later I still do not understand, and I certainly do not understand the correlation of shapes to handwriting. I teach lowercase first because we need them more often than uppercase, and the simple shapes conform to natural movements of hands and fingers. Letters are implanted in motor memory for writing and reading.
Uppercase letters do not comply well with the easy, flowing movement of italic lowercase letters. At first children need just a few that allow them to write their names properly. When lowercase letters are developing well, teach all of the uppercase with words so children learn the reason for uppercase, and they practice the lowercase at the same time.
Now I am beginning to understand why the circles, squares, etc. were thought necessary. Back in the early 20th century educators decided to start children with manuscript instead of the looped, Palmer like cursive. It looked easier. They must have said, “Hey guys, we gotta teach ‘em shapes so they can write our new ball & stick alphabet.” Think of it! Teach drawing only until these babes are old enough to write like grown-ups.
Now two separate, different alphabets are being taught…or not.
More Comment than Review of The Missing Ink by Philip Hensher
The book is certain to have an impact on those who fret over the fate of handwriting. I especially appreciated the last chapter regarding our very human reasons for putting pen to paper.
As one who has taught an italic based method for nearly forty years, and believe I have been successful with it, when I read the chapter, “Preparing the Boys for Death: The Invention of Italic,” I wondered how Hensher had come to such negative bias. He used adjectives like “posh” and “elitist” in describing italic. Then I realized he was presenting valid reasons why the method has not been as successful in education as it should be.
Rosemary Sassoon’s Handwriting of the Twentieth Century illustrates the my-way-or-the-highway attitudes of many who developed handwriting programs.
Another chapter is devoted to Marion Richardson whose work Hensher praises. It was Sassoon who introduced me to Richardson’s work, an exceptional master of handwriting instruction. She spoke to me abut Richardson’s belief that students should not stick to a model, but rather let their own personal hand evolve. I try to heed this belief, and to put fun and pleasure into instruction.
Marion Richardson’s model, except for zed, is far closer to italic than the copperplate derivatives, as Hensher acknowledges, “…slightly italic quality….”
If italic became too ornamental among some practitioners, it was a degeneration of a basically simple, legible and rapid method. In fact it can be easily taught to beginning writers, but not with a broad edged tool, a some have done. A crayon or pencil will do, and lots of playful handwriting related activities.
Hensher states that, “Italic is performed with an italic nib,…” Not necessarily. The basic letter formations are the same whether written with a pencil, a ballpoint or italic pen.
I think he does a disservice when he writes about Tom Gourdie whose Simple Modern Hand was just that. It can lead to a rapid, legible hand. He was not a hoity-toity elitist. His fault was that he wanted his students to emulate his model as closely as possible, rather than being free to develop an individual hand. I am grateful for his teaching. He showed me how to hold a pen with relaxed fingers—comfort and fluency when writing for hours, and a diminished carbuncle (a misnomer that is sometimes used to describe the bump that develops on the third finger from a death grip on a pen). What I learned from Gourdie is about the same as the quote Hensher attributes to Richardson, “…only easy movements of the hand….”
Probably personal, but an italic pen slows my writing; I worry too much about how it looks and lose the real purpose, what I am trying to recount. Give me a monoline tool. In my opinion the “italic obsessives,” Henshers words, who insist on the thick and thin marks made by the chisel edged nib of an italic pen detract from good, practical italic instruction.
So I wonder why Hensher devoted a chapter to his search in London stores for an italic pen.
Surprising E-mail!
I knew my method of instruction has helped people to relax and make handwriting easier, especially for those with arthritic hands, but this e-mail came as an especially happy surprise:
“Dear Nan,
I received your book Fix It Write about a month ago and have been practising (UK spelling) ever since. Having worked physically hard most of my life I found my handwriting had become increasingly poor. To the extent that i seldom would write ‘long-hand’ at all due to the scrawling mess I left on the page. Over years i had developed muscles for laying blocks and stirring cement, not holding a pen delicately. What with the arrival of the Internet I found it increasingly redundant to write letters, most communication now is via email etc.
A couple of years ago i damaged the nerves in both my arms resulting in a minor tremble in both hands. This meant that even printing the text by hand became difficult for me. During the past month of practising I have noticed that the trembling in my hands has stopped. I am able to hold my hands quite still now. I’ve still a way to go, but there is a dramatic improvement in my handwriting to the extent that I now get excited at the chance of writing again.
Best Wishes,
Bruce Austen.”