The relationship between handwriting and performance in school subjects was helped by the Deputy Director for Academic Affairs in primary school State Educational Establishment "Gymnasium No. 4 of Vitebsk" Natalya Kalichenok.
Does poor handwriting affect student performance?
– The answer to this question cannot be unambiguous. Forcing a child to write beautifully, we forget that calligraphy is special kind visual arts. Not everyone has perfect handwriting. But first you need to understand what, in fact, worries you - just ugly written words or numerous blots, mistakes, mixed up letters?
The absence of these actions can compromise muscle tone, worsening an already difficult situation with dysgraphics. School achievement. Silvana Leporas, Education Service Coordinator at Dante Alighieri College in Sao Paulo, confirms: Disciplines tend to be very smart students. Their word of mouth is very good, but when it comes to getting ideas down on paper, they have a lot of trouble,” he says. It is this unfolding problem that can jeopardize student achievement. Because of the difficulty in the motor act, the child takes more to perform certain actions than his counterparts.
On the one hand, if you are worried solely because of beauty, then the trouble is not so great. The most important thing is that the words are read normally and there are no grammatical errors in the text. On the other hand, not beautiful handwriting can indeed be the reason for the failure of many children. In elementary school, grades are reduced depending on the number of corrections in accordance with the standards of certification. Then the motivation to study disappears, because the handwriting cannot be changed.
This applies to simple tasks such as copying a lesson from the board. Another typical situation: the teacher asks the students to write a text, and Shame, embarrassed by the ugly writing, concludes that it is not even worth writing. "It undermines the child's self-esteem," says Sonia das Dores Rodriguez from the Faculty of Health Sciences at the State University of Campinas. When faced with an obstacle, he stops learning.
Without exhaustive training in calligraphy, attention in school should be doubled. If coursework had existed at an early stage, it would have been possible to find it. With practice in non-use, teachers and parents can confuse speech with laziness, warns Marco Antonio Arruda. But ugly lyrics can be taught, and lazy kids have the skills to write well. There are no more digraphs: they have no ability and need treatment.
In addition, a child who writes ugly and sloppy often does it more slowly than others, because his hand gets tired faster. As a result, he does not have time to write everything on the control and gets bad marks. As a result, even the most smart child can turn into a doppelgänger.
Is it possible to correct handwriting, for example, in adolescence? If yes, what should be done for this?
How to treat - As with other learning disabilities, the treatment of dysgraphia is multidisciplinary and involves neurologists, psychoperologists, speech therapists, and therapists. Medications are indicated only in the presence of other disorders such as attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder.
As for the motor part, Raquel Caruso of the Edak says that writing a letter requires preliminary preparation patient with broader exercises. “The main thing is to work with the body, with exercises like clay treatment and massage, and then move on to the specifics that write and other issues like memory,” he explains. "We only see the end product, which is illegible writing, but there's a lot behind it." Depending on the case, treatment can take months or even years.
– Bad handwriting needs to be corrected, and this requires regular exercise. The sooner you start improving it, the better the process will go. junior school student you can learn new things faster, and he will be more willing to correct his mistakes. Handwriting correction will help the child to be more diligent, attentive, and these qualities will be useful in later school life. But first of all, it is important to identify the cause bad handwriting.
The goal is not to get to beautiful writing but, yes, readable. And give impetus to the process of teaching children. Writing is a cultural asset essential to the functioning of our society and is the basis of many industries, both academic and professional, but its acquisition is far from trivial. Indeed, learning to write is a complex activity that requires the mastery and coordination of various abilities, cognitive, perceptual-motor, attention and linguistic skills.
De Ajuaiguerra, Auzias, and Denner sum up the features of writing beautifully, emphasizing that it is “as much a practice as a language.” Considering the impact of handwritten letters on other writing activities such as copying or producing texts,,;;, and the fact that difficulties in writing need to be corrected, we therefore consider it important to evaluate the implications of a new training designed to distribute cursive letters to school-age children .
Reason #1. Incorrect body position, hands, posture, leg position, unsuitable writing pens. The success of writing is largely determined by the creation of optimal hygienic conditions: the selection of furniture, seating, direction of lighting, the optimal shape of the pen, the duration of uninterrupted writing, etc.
Reason number 2. Incorrect position of the notebook on the desk.
In adults, handwriting requires less attention and cognitive resources than in children because the neuromotor processes involved are largely automated. As a result, we forget that this is a very complex activity that requires long hours of training. Because our mnemonic and informational resources are limited, automating traces thus frees up resources that can then be used for the linguistic aspects of writing.
From an experimental point of view, a record can be studied at three levels, depending on the size of the units taken into account: letters, words, or texts. Although only the third level of analysis reflects activity, however, the study of the other two levels is particularly informative in relation to the neuromotor processes in which the subject is written. and the study of letter production allows us to study the perceptual and motor aspects of writing. We know that the three levels are interdependent and mutually influence. Several studies have shown that graphic-motor processes hinder the construction and production of texts.
Reason #3. Poorly developed fine motor skills.
Reason number 4. Insufficient level of development of spatial perception. Usually this problem is not too serious and passes quickly. Very often, parents, seeing that the child is confusing letters or that they are "hanging in the air", make him redo the same thing a hundred times! But repeated rewriting won't help here.
Thus, the development of content, text implementation and transcription will be based on the same cognitive resources. For example, text quality is better when children dictate their production to another person than when they write it themselves. Similarly, children are better at recalling information and producing verbal and written sentences. Studies evaluating the impact of learning on literacy have also found a link between letter formation and text preparation.
Learning to write begins at kindergarten. The child gradually acquires the skills necessary for the graphic act, he learns to write his name capital letters, scripts and courses, copy several simple words and write letters on the line and then between two lines. The first exercises consist of copy exercises from models, a task close to a drawing. As the child learns, the child creates a visual representation of the letter that guides its production and a motor representation specific to each letter.
Reason number 5. Features of the brain organization. Many believe that disgusting handwriting is just a consequence of inattention, lack of concentration and laziness. But it's not. The most important organ responsible for writing is not the hand, but the head. In order to learn to write, you need not only the relationship of thinking and fine motor skills hands, but also the ability to translate the information contained in the brain into a system of signs.
From the very beginning of learning to write, children can use the motor representations of letters to build their visual representations. Thus, psychologists show that Japanese children in the third and fifth grades elementary school letters are better remembered when children learn to write them, not when they see them. Strengthening the links between perceptual and motor skills will improve letter recall and may promote understanding of the alphabet principle in young children.
The study of writing and reading is also closely related and mutually beneficial. At the beginning of the learning process, these activities are based on a body of knowledge and processes that are general or strong interactions, such as knowledge of the alphabetic system. Therefore visual recognition of letters is important as it is the first process in the game of reading;; for review. Multisensory methods are based on a strong link between writing and reading and suggest that strengthening this link will improve children's reading skills.
Therefore, problems associated with mastering written language can signal brain disorders. Most often these are not serious pathologies, but some individual characteristics child. For example, left-handed people (especially overtrained ones) can experience difficulties, as well as people who are equally good at both hands. However, all this is usually easily overcome.
In other words, these experiments suggest that aspects of programming and motor characteristics are related to the composition and production of written texts and thus highlight the importance of the child acquiring plot. contributions of tactile or tactile interfaces.
Letter development
To write their first letters, children usually use the same motor production rules as they do for drawing. The rules for making a drawing affect the writing of letters. in the same way that the study of writing leads to subsequent modifications of these rules. In France, the sense of cursive rotation, which is done in a counter-clockwise direction, puts restrictions on the motors and therefore will not be used spontaneously by young children.
There is a much more serious problem - dysgraphia, which can be accompanied by dyslexia - difficulties in perceiving printed text. The cause of dysgraphia and dyslexia is a violation of neural connections that transmit information between the hemispheres of the brain. Dysgraphic handwriting is not just horror, but horror-horror! Crooked lines and clumsy letters are not so bad.
As the teaching of writing develops, both quantitative and qualitative differences will appear. The emergence of these differences is explained not only by learning in the classroom, but also by maturation allows the child to perform the subtle gestures necessary for the formation of letters. The evolution of writing with age concerns both the static and kinematic aspects of writing. Between 7 and 10 years there is a general progression of various static and dynamic indices, in particular a gradual decrease in the size of letters, the duration of traces, the number and duration of breaks.
Words can be written in a mirror image, letters are mixed up or omitted, the distance between words is uneven, a large number of errors, blots and corrections. But at the same time, dyslexics and dysgraphics are often much smarter than other children.
Many experts believe that if people who successfully combine the work of both hemispheres of the brain have two-dimensional vision, then the perception of dyslexics and dysgraphics is three-dimensional. But, having this unique quality, in most cases they do not know how to use it. In general, either geniuses grow out of them (for example, Albert Einstein, Hans Christian Andersen were dysgraphics), or people who are not self-confident.
The variability of productions for the same child also tends to decrease. In parallel, there is also a significant increase in speed. Since 10 years, the observed changes are insignificant and lead to better automation and writing flexibility.
Transition from retroactive control to proactive control
In cognitive psychology, it is classical to distinguish between two main modes of motion control: closed-loop control and open-loop control. In the first mode, the motor track stored in non-volatile memory determines the start of movement, which is then adjusted in real time using the motor's sensory feedback. Thus, this method of control is applicable to movements whose duration is long enough to allow these changes. On the other hand, closed loop control refers to very fast movements.
Dysgraphia is a serious problem that interferes with normal learning and is directly related to the peculiarities of the brain. Therefore, attentive parents and teachers need to timely show the child and his notebook to specialists - a speech therapist, a psychologist.
– Are there any techniques or exercises to improve handwriting?
There are a lot of tools and methods that will help improve a child's handwriting. Various drawing techniques, hatching, drawing a figure by dots, modeling, playing with small details (designer, weaving, knitting), etc.
It assumes that the movement is entirely pre-programmed and therefore performed without reference to sensory cues. In reality, regardless of movement, the control regimen is never exclusive, but includes both feedback and driving programs whose appropriate contribution depends on the task and experience of the participants.
The motion control mode would be basically reversed at the start of training. While writing, children use sensory feedback from their own hand movements. With learning and automation, the active motion control mode will be dominant. Thus, children no longer need sensory feedback to draw a letter, as they can rely on a "motor program" containing the central drive commands necessary and sufficient for correct and fast tracking.
Writing with a ballpoint pen involves constant muscle tension, so make it a rule to buy it with your child without fail. Make sure the pen does not scratch, snag, or scratch the paper. At home, it is more convenient to train with a pencil, felt-tip pen, gel pen. Students in grades 5-7 can be introduced to such a representative of the retro style as a fountain pen.
In other words, the changes in the static and kinematic aspects of writing observed in the first years of training may be the result of a shift from a retroactive control strategy based on sensory feedback to a proactive control strategy based on the internal representation of the motor program.
We also find that the lack of visual feedback has a greater effect on children. early age than in older children and adults. In the absence of feedback, the duration of movement and dysfunction increase. The difference between with and without feedback is more important for 8- and 9-year-olds. In the absence of visual feedback, children tend to try to maximize kinesthetic information by increasing the size of the letters received. This feedback can help develop internal ideas about movement that support older children and adults.
If your child incorrectly connects and writes certain elements, you should pay attention to their development. Use calque. Lay the tracing paper on top of the page. The child needs to circle the sample, write two more times, and then remove the tracing paper, and let him rewrite everything in a clean copy. Thus, the hand gets used to withdraw beautiful letters and your student is not very tired.
You can also use a “zebra” - a lined sheet of paper (with inclined lines spaced at the same intervals from each other), which children put under the page of a notebook and draw letters along the lines: this will help maintain the same size and slope, improve calligraphy.
The time you allocate to work on improving handwriting and the amount of training exercises should be dosed. Do not overload your daughter or son. You should not expect positive results from the child if every evening instead of walking and talking you will force him to rewrite various texts over and over again for hours. When checking the work, try to pay attention not to what did not work out, but on the contrary - how the child wrote certain words or even letter combinations correctly and beautifully.
At an older age, frequent rewriting of texts at a slow pace will help to correct the state of affairs, the volume of which must be increased as incorrectly or simply ugly letters are corrected. For rewriting, select the works of your favorite prose writers.
Boring workouts will turn into an exciting activity if you start keeping your diary or constantly write down interesting thoughts, not forgetting about beautiful handwriting.
Alesya Grishman.
Writing skills are acquired by children with great effort. At the very beginning, this process seems complicated, painstaking. Hands get tired, and letters and words turn out not at all like in adults: clumsy, ugly, awkward. All children respond differently to writing. Some soon begin to write quickly, calligraphically, while others have difficulty. If handwriting is not corrected in time, it will remain clumsy, awkward for life. The task of correcting it should excite teachers, the children themselves and their parents. The success of schooling will largely depend on how well a child masters this skill.
Where does handwriting begin?
According to scientists, psychologists, physiologists, the formation and development of writing skills begins in early childhood. Their bookmark refers to the moment when the baby picks up a pencil, felt-tip pen and begins to draw simple lines, circles, dashes, dots on a sheet of paper, in other words, scribbles. He is just learning to control the movement of his hand. At this age, the baby very often crawls out of the sheet, or even begins to draw on the table, wallpaper and other objects. It can be said that his hands work further than his head. Only with the prompts of adults does the child begin to understand that hand movements during drawing should not be spontaneous, but thoughtful, smooth.
Modeling, folding mosaics and puzzles, finger games develop motor skills of the hands, which is responsible for the correctness, sequence of movements. Psychologists attach great importance to this fact. They say that the development of fine motor skills is closely related to the formation of oral and written speech.
Graphic skills are a good help, the foundation of writing. Until the age of 5-6, children improve their drawing skills. After realizing that it is possible to depict not only a certain object, but also words, the child begins to draw images of letters. This happens at the age of 6-7 years. Mental perception of information and language abilities reach maturity. This period coincides, coincidentally or not, with the transition of the child to a school where writing is taught in an organized manner. Handwriting is born in primary school.
The child has poor handwriting
Many mothers complain about the poor handwriting of their children, accuse school teachers of poor teaching, or simply cannot understand the true reasons for this phenomenon. First you need to figure out what is considered to be bad handwriting.
- Some completely different letters are spelled the same, which is misleading to the reader. It is not clear which letter he meant. The most common examples of similar spelling letters a-z, w-w, c-y, n-p.
- Letters are connected incorrectly, words are written with a break in syllables. Such a letter looks ugly, it is difficult to read.
- The words are not on the line, but under or above it, "walk" in an arbitrary direction. Sometimes you can observe when the lines of the letter "float" up or down.
- The letters in the word vary greatly in size.
- The slope exceeds 50 degrees, the letters lie on the line, while the words become wide, vague, incomprehensible.
If such signs are observed in written speech, then we can say that the handwriting is subject to correction.
Causes of bad handwriting
Handwriting can and should be corrected. The sooner you start correcting it, the easier and faster this process will go, the more chances for success. At a young age, any information is absorbed better, stored for a long time. But it should be noted that poor handwriting indicates the presence of some problems of a physiological, emotional and psychological nature. It is important to reveal the true reasons for the formation of a clumsy, unreadable letter.
- Motor skills of the hands are not sufficiently developed. It is difficult for a child to write, the hand and fingers are very tired, numb. Also challenging task is cutting out various figures with scissors, drawing, coloring with pencils, modeling from plasticine, tying shoelaces.
- Heredity. Very often, a child's handwriting is similar to the writing style of one of his parents. Correction will give results only with a strong desire, desire, patience.
- Spatial perception is poorly formed. The child confuses up and down, right and left.
- Poor health, fatigue, recent illness. Changing handwriting for this reason is temporary. Everything will return to normal as soon as the child gains vitality and energy.
- The situation within the family. If a child is under strong pressure, conflicts with parents often arise, or if he is brought up in an incomplete family, then this affects his mental and emotional state. All life's problems affect handwriting, by which, by the way, graphologists can determine the psychological state and individual personality traits.
Basic rules for beautiful writing
First of all, you should deal with the causes of poor handwriting. But do not forget about simple but significant points that are often not observed by the guys. If everything is done correctly, then the handwriting will noticeably improve.
- The position of the notebook affects the slope of the letter. You need to lay it so that the lower part forms an angle of approximately 30-40 degrees with the edge of the table. You can check the correct position of the notebook when working with copybooks that have oblique lines, which should be perpendicular to the edge of the table.
- Proper grip and comfortable handle. The correct grip must be taught already at the time when the baby takes pencils and felt-tip pens for drawing for the first time. To properly hold the writing object, you need to put it on the lower side of the middle finger, and fix this position with the index and thumb, simply lowering them onto the handle. The grip should not be strong, otherwise the hand will constantly get tired, the letter will be slow, and the letter and words will be uneven. The writing object should be comfortable, the optimal width is 7-10 mm.
- Correct landing. It is necessary to sit deeply on a chair, move closer to the table so that there is a place as wide as a palm in front. The legs are bent at an angle of 90%, the back is straight, the shoulders are at the same height. The body can be slightly tilted forward, while the elbows lie on the edge of the table, the head is not lowered. If the child is completely leaning against the back of the chair, then his elbows should slightly go beyond the edge of the table and be at a distance of 10-15 cm from the body. This position is considered ideal.
- Regular workouts. Observing the three previous conditions, you can start writing. The more practice you have, the more confident and beautiful your handwriting will become.
How to develop fine motor skills
Regardless of the age of the child, in order to correct handwriting, it is necessary to develop fine motor skills of the hands. You can use various methods for this, for example:
- drawing;
- hatching;
- transferring a drawing using tracing paper or carbon paper;
- exercises, like, continue the pattern, connect the dots, circle the contour;
- applications;
- activities with lacing toys;
- cutting out of paper, cardboard;
- finger games;
- modeling;
- quilling classes;
- folding origami, puzzles.
The variety of ways to develop motor skills allows the child to show his interest in a particular type of activity that is interesting and exciting for him.
Parents should know that handwriting correction is hard work that requires patience and effort from adults and children. But the reward for this will be a beautiful handwriting, so the efforts are not in vain.
