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