I sat down yesterday and today with a few home school moms since they wanted to look at the curriculum - they both have kids that are struggling - they are older than Belle. The moms felt like they tried everything. (In fact one has 2 high schoolers, who also struggled, but she didn't know about this at that point) That is why they were at this practicum. They took a lot of time assessing the curriculim and were really impressed with how easy it is to implement.
We also spent a lot of time talking about handwriting. They used to be on the page that handwriting is not that important. I also though - come on - everything is computerized now... big deal... but as I am opening my mind to a whole new world of education - I now realize that even in the age of computers, handwriting fluency is still key.
Interesting....
"To date, only 4 studies have examined the effectiveness of early intervention programs in writing. In each study, young children received extra instruction in either handwriting or spelling from an adult tutor, classroom aide, or a parent volunteer.
In the earliest study (Berninger et al., 1997), 1 st grade children with poor handwriting were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 handwriting treatment groups or a contact control condition (i.e., instruction in phonological awareness). The handwriting treatments evaluated 5 alternatives for learning how to write the lower-case letters of the alphabet: (1) write the letter after seeing the instructor write it; (2) write the letter after examining a copy of it containing numbered arrows showing the order and direction for each stroke; (3) write the letter from memory after examining an unmarked copy of it; (4) write the letter from memory after examining a copy containing numbered arrows; and (5) write the letter while looking at an unmarked copy. After 8 hours of instruction with a specially trained tutor, children in the 5 treatment groups made greater improvements in handwriting than students in the contact control condition, with the most successful treatment being the one where children wrote the letter from memory after examining a copy containing numbered arrows. This same group had higher scores on a norm-referenced measure of compositional fluency, assessing students' ability to craft sentences, than children in the contact control condition or the other handwriting conditions. This finding is especially noteworthy because it showed transfer from instruction in handwriting to composition fluency, at least for the group that made the largest handwriting gains.
A second investigation by Jones and Christensen extended this initial finding by demonstrating that supplemental handwriting instruction improved not only the handwriting of 1st grade children with poor penmanship, but the quality of their writing as well. Over the course of an 8-week period, the participating children received extra handwriting instruction (individually or in a small group) from a teacher aide or parent volunteer (10 minutes per day). Instruction focused on learning how to form the lower-case letters of the alphabet, correcting errors in letter formation, and writing letters fluently. At the end of the 8-week period, both the handwriting and story writing quality of children who received this extra instruction improved to the point where it was indistinguishable from that of their regular peers who were initially better hand writers and story writers.
A third study by Graham, Harris, and Fink replicated the earlier finding that supplemental handwriting instruction can boost compositional fluency, but it did not replicate the finding that it enhances writing quality as well. First-grade children with poor handwriting were randomly assigned to a handwriting treatment condition and a contact control condition (i.e., instruction in phonological awareness). The handwriting treatment included instruction in naming, identifying, and writing the lower-case letters of the alphabet as well as repeated writing exercises designed to increase handwriting fluency. After approximately 7 hours of instruction provided by specially trained tutors, students assigned to the handwriting condition made greater improvements in handwriting than those in the contact control group. They also evidenced greater gains in crafting sentences, as in Berninger et al., and generating text when writing a story. Handwriting instruction, however, did not improve the overall quality of the stories that these children produced. On 6-month follow-up probes, most of the advantages obtained by the handwriting group were maintained, including their superiority in crafting sentences (no conclusions could be drawn about story writing, though, as this measure was not administered at this point).
In contrast to the first 3 investigations, a fourth study by Berninger et al. focused on the impact of supplemental spelling instruction on writing performance. Second-grade children who were poor spellers were randomly assigned to 7 spelling treatment groups and a contact control condition (i.e., receiving instruction in phonological and orthographic awareness skills). Specially trained tutors provided approximately 8 hours of instruction to students. Children in the spelling groups made greater gains in spelling than those in the contact control condition. For one of the experimental groups, spelling instruction also resulted in improved writing performance (i.e., longer compositions). Students in this group were taught common phoneme- spelling associations; practiced new spellings by pointing to each letter in a left-to-right order while simultaneously saying the sound; and used their spelling words when writing a short composition. Although additional replication is needed, the findings from this study suggest that early and extra spelling instruction can also have a beneficial effect on compositional fluency.
These 4 studies demonstrated that early intervention programs that provide instruction in either handwriting or spelling can have a positive effect on one aspect of struggling writers' composing; namely, compositional fluency, as measured by children's ability to either craft sentences or generate text when writing. These finding have important implications for the prevention of writing problems, as data collected by Berninger and her colleagues indicate that impaired compositional fluency in the primary grades may serve as the developmental origin of writing problems in later grades. Some caution, however, must be exercised in the selection of early intervention programs for handwriting or spelling, as many of the approaches employed in the studies by Berninger et al. did not lead to improvements in writing performance."
excerpt taken from
http://www.ldonline.org/article/6213?theme=print
Prevention and Intervention of Writing Difficulties for Students with Learning Disabilities
By: Steven Graham, Karen R. Harris, and Lynn Larsen (2001)
I gave each Belle and Bear their own Handwriting book - and let them work at their own pace.
I had to look had for a handwriting book that had basic skills in it without all the fluff. Belle gets very disctracted with all the fluff. Black/White sheets, simple directions and minimal to no pictures are the keys for her.
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