Children acquire writing skills with great effort. At the very beginning, this process seems complicated and painstaking. Your hands get tired, and your letters and words are not at all like those of adults: clumsy, ugly, awkward. All children learn to write differently. Some people soon begin to write quickly and calligraphically, while others have difficulties. If your handwriting is not corrected in time, it will remain clumsy and awkward for the rest of your life. The task of correcting it should concern teachers, the children themselves and their parents. The success of school will largely depend on how well a child masters this skill.
Then coach teams of teachers to use the rating scale appropriately and consistently. But at the end of the day, the quality of writing remains subjective. What is considered well written, another, in fact, could always consider it poorly written.
Steve Graham, a professor of education at Arizona State University, studies ways to teach writing, trying to understand what those methods actually do. For the nearly published study, along with some colleagues, Professor Graham reviewed about 250 of the most important studies on how to teach students from... kindergarten to high school.
Where does handwriting begin?
According to scientists, psychologists and 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, a felt-tip pen and begins to draw simple lines, circles, dashes, dots, or, in other words, doodles on a sheet of paper. He is just learning to control the movement of his hand. At this age, the baby very often crawls beyond the boundaries of the sheet, or even begins to draw on the table, wallpaper and other objects. You could say his hands work further than his head. Only with prompting from adults does the child begin to understand that hand movements during drawing should not be spontaneous, but thoughtful, smooth.
Graham's analysis fails to resolve secular debates that students learn to write naturally—simply by doing so, more specifically, through explicit writing instruction. However, there are effective methods, in which Graham's research is unequivocally expressed. Unfortunately, many teachers do not use them. We have proof that we know exactly what we're working on, but they almost never apply to the classroom,” Graham said.
Devote more time to writing. To teach children to write well, you must ask them to write a lot. You won't be a great soccer player if you don't play soccer. There is some evidence that this also applies to writing. Five studies of particularly good teachers' performance on their students' literacy suggest that best teachers ask their students to write often. In nine different experiments with students writing 15 minutes a day from second grade to the end, Seventy percent of studios that assessed the impact of "extra" writing quotas over normal in studies found an improvement in the quality of students' writing.
Modeling, folding mosaics and puzzles, finger games develop hand motor skills, which are responsible for the correctness and sequence of movements. Psychologists attach great importance to this fact. They say that development fine motor skills is closely related to the formation of oral and written speech.
Several studies have found clear benefits from additional recording time beyond what is typically required in the school curriculum. Not only does the quality of writing improve, but reading comprehension also improves at the same time. However, despite these data, research shows that in US schools after the third primary school little time is spent on writing. Written assignments rarely extend beyond one page; sometimes they are no longer than a paragraph. This is what teachers report, and if they are likely exaggerating anything, it is the "amount" of writing typically required by their students.
Graphic skills are a good help, the foundation of writing. Until the age of 5-6 years, children improve their drawing skills. After realizing that it is possible to depict not only a specific object, but also words, the child begins to draw images of letters. This happens at the age of 6-7 years. Mental processing and language abilities reach maturity. This period coincides, by chance or not, with the moment the child transitions to school, where writing is taught in an organized manner. IN primary school handwriting is born.
Graham believes that many language teachers enjoy teaching literature rather than writing. But in several studies, teachers often admit that they do not assign more writing tasks because they do not have time to read and provide answers to those who often end up with very long texts. This can be understood when thinking about a high school student who has about thirty students in his class.
Some might also argue that a small number of high-quality writing assignments is preferable to a large number of low-quality ones. But, again, teacher responses and classroom observations, as evidenced by numerous studies, show that students are most often asked to write summaries rather than complex texts. "We don't find a high level of writing that involves analysis and interpretation," Graham says. “There is no challenging writing activity that develops the skills needed to get into college or find a job.”
The child has bad handwriting
Many mothers complain about their children’s poor handwriting, blame school teachers for poor teaching, or simply cannot understand the true reasons for this phenomenon. First, you need to figure out what is considered bad handwriting.
- Some are completely different letters They are written the same, which misleads the reader. It is unclear what letter he meant. The most common examples of similar spelling are letters a-z, w-sh, ts-u, n-p.
- Letters are connected incorrectly, words are written with a syllable gap. Such a letter looks ugly and is difficult to read.
- The words are not on the line, but under or above it, “walking” in any direction. Sometimes you can observe when the lines of a letter “float” up or down.
- The letters in a word vary greatly in size.
- The tilt exceeds 50 degrees, the letters lie on the line, and the words become wide, vague, and incomprehensible.
If such signs are observed in written speech, then we can say that the handwriting needs to be corrected.
It's unclear what the ideal time to devote to writing is. Graham, who also wrote a guide to writing methods on behalf of the Department of Public Instruction, recommends "an hour a day." He admitted that he did not have the research to back up this time. But to his support, remember that when Poland increased language lessons to more than four hours a week, the results international tests this nation began to improve.
In 83 percent of thirty studies on the use of word processing software, students' writing quality improved when they wrote using a computer rather than by hand. The impact was greater for middle school students, but even younger students benefited. The hypothesis is that students feel more free to change and improve their sentences because it is easier on the computer to delete, add, or move text. The more you develop the edit, the better the final text.
Causes of bad handwriting
You can and should correct your handwriting. The sooner you start correcting it, the easier and faster this process will be, and the greater the chances of success. At a young age, any information is absorbed better and retained 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 open real reasons creating clumsy, unreadable writing.
There may be legitimate confusion about how these studies were conducted. Those who rated the texts might be influenced by the fact that they were more readable if they were written on a PC because typed characters are clearer than handwritten ones? In most cases in the study, handwritten essays were transcribed onto computers before they were delivered for scoring. Thus, the teachers who had to evaluate them could not understand how they were prepared directly on computers at the beginning, and which ones were prepared hand in hand.
It is also possible that spelling and grammar corrections, which are sometimes automatically triggered by word processing software, allow students to submit assignments with fewer spelling errors, more "cleaner" ones, which are therefore perceived as superior.
- Hand motor skills are insufficiently developed. It is difficult for a child to write; the hand and fingers become very tired and go numb. Also challenging task is cutting out various shapes 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. Adjustment will give results only with strong desire, aspiration, and patience.
- Spatial perception is poorly formed. The child confuses up and down, right and left.
- Poor health, fatigue, recent illness. The change in 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 often arise with parents, or he is brought up in an incomplete family, then this affects his mental and emotional state. All life problems affect handwriting, by which, by the way, graphologists can determine the psychological state and individual characteristics personality.
Basic rules of beautiful writing
First of all, you need to understand the reasons bad handwriting. But we must not forget about simple but significant points that are often not observed by the guys. If you do everything correctly, your handwriting will noticeably improve.
Some teachers are passionate about the importance of handwriting, convinced that the act of writing produces neurologically stronger memories. There is some evidence that taking notes by hand is more effective for understanding and remembering. But if our goal is quality writing rather than storage, it seems that everything depends on computer writing preference, especially from high school onwards.
Another benefit for teachers who believe students should write for more than just teachers is that computerized text files are easier to share with classmates, giving them more exposure to an audience of readers and real-world results.
- The tilt of the writing is affected by the position of the notebook. You need to place 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.
- Correct grip and comfortable handle. Correct grip must be taught already at the time when the baby first takes pencils and felt-tip pens for drawing. To hold a writing object correctly, you need to place it on the lower side of your middle finger, and use your index and thumb fix this position by simply lowering them onto the handle. The grip should not be strong, otherwise the hand will constantly get tired, the writing 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. You need to sit deeply in a chair, move towards the table so much that there is a palm-width of space in front. Legs are bent at an angle of 90%, back is straight, shoulders are at the same height. The body can be slightly tilted forward, with the elbows resting on the edge of the table and the head not lowered. If the child leans completely against the back of the chair, then his elbows should slightly extend beyond the edge of the table and be at a distance of 10-15 cm from the body. This position is considered ideal.
- Regular training. Having observed the three previous conditions, you can begin writing. The more practical lessons you have, the more confident and beautiful your handwriting will become.
How to develop fine motor skills
Regardless of the child’s age, to correct handwriting it is necessary to develop fine motor skills of the hands. To do this, you can use various methods, for example:
Despite this evidence, there are delays in the adoption of technology in the classroom. Graham's surveys show that "too many schools still rely on paper and pen as their primary medium, if not just writing." Teaching grammar doesn't work. Traditional rules for teaching grammar are ineffective. Six studies with third- and second-grade children found that writing performance actually declined when children were traditionally taught grammar. the writing of students whose grammar was traditionally taught was worse than that of students who were not taught such lessons.
- drawing;
- hatching;
- transferring a drawing using tracing paper or carbon paper;
- exercises like, continue the pattern, connect the dots, trace along the contour;
- applications;
- activities with lacing toys;
- cutting from paper, cardboard;
- finger games;
- modeling;
- quilling classes;
- folding origami, puzzles.
The variety of ways to develop motor skills allows a child to show his interest in a specific type of activity that is interesting and exciting for him.
Three studies have shown that teaching children how to combine two simple phrases into one complex phrase has obvious advantages for training. Instead, traditional teaching grammars, sentences, or grammar rules are not equally effective. Graham suspects this is because grammar lessons are often perceived as unrelated to writing. The researcher found research that shows significant improvement in the quality of students' writing when teachers provide examples of correct language use, demonstrating how to use grammatical rules in the sentences students write. today many experimental studies looking for innovative and effective procedures teaching grammar.
Parents should know that correcting handwriting is hard work that requires patience and effort from adults and children. But the reward for this will be beautiful handwriting, so the efforts are not in vain.
Correction of handwriting in schoolchildren.
Your young student is about to move on to the next grade, but the scribbles in his notebooks are still difficult to make out? Perhaps you also had difficulties with beautiful writing of letters in childhood, because many of us pored over writing notebooks, rewriting exercises so that it was beautiful.
Asperger is a perfectionist, meaning that he wanted his writing to be perfect, so he spent a lot of time wiping, writing letters again to make them even nicer. The handwriting makes it too difficult for this, but there is still an attempt to understand everything the teacher says while writing.
These disorders are characterized by difficulties with punctuation, grammar, spelling, text organization, and handwriting. Self-written writing requires mastering an extremely complex sequence of movements. This type of disorder occurs in 2-8% of children, mostly boys. It usually appears in combination with other disorders such as developmental coordination disorder.
Of course, now we rarely write anything “by hand”, except perhaps a list of groceries that need to be bought in a store, or a note to a child reminding him of what he needs to take with him to school - the bulk of epistolary communication has moved into the realm of computer typing text. But this is for adults, but what should a child do if the teacher, checking his notebooks, does not understand what is written there and lowers his grades for handwriting?
Impaired developmental coordination. Children with developmental coordination disorders may have problems with their large and small motor skills. This disorder occurs in approximately 6% of school-age children. Although coordination disorders are not usually recognized as a typical aspect of learning difficulties, it is worth paying attention because.
Like learning difficulties, they are associated with impairment in certain areas of the child's functioning; they may adversely affect the student's development in other areas; Some children affected by learning difficulties also have motor control problems and vice versa. Hans Asperger described the writing problem of some of his children. His research was based on careful observation of four children.
Let’s try to understand in our material today what is the reason for a child’s poor handwriting and how you can deal with it.
We indicate the goal and means
Open your favorite student's notebooks. What exactly in what was written bothers you the most? This can be “dirt” in the form of numerous blots, overs and crossings, letters tilted “out of order,” mixed up or missing letters. Select a “goal” and let’s get started!
And for a very long time, spelling errors occurred, despite the fact that the rules and exceptions for them were fully observed. At the same time, the market so that he himself could not read. At the beginning, however, the general began to write a letter similar to a technical one. And it turned out that not only did people flock to read, not only did other people no longer have difficulty reading what he wrote, but they also almost stopped making spelling mistakes. And now it doesn't matter.
Difficulties with writing can be a concern for parents and teachers. Single letters are poorly shaped and may be larger than they should be, which affects both children and adults with Asperger's Syndrome. The specialized term for this function is macrograph. The child may spend too much time on each letter, delaying completion of the entire writing task. Sometimes a child rubs the eraser with a pencil several times because each letter is not a copy of what he sees in the textbook.
Let's say right away that if the words are readable And there are no serious grammatical errors in the text written by the child , then it’s hardly worth worrying about; perhaps the child’s handwriting simply does not live up to certain canons of perfectionist parents. Of course, it’s nice to hold a notebook in your hands, the pages of which are filled evenly and in beautiful letters However, do we really love our children because they write beautifully?
A child may refuse to complete an assignment in class because he or she does not want to write, not necessarily because he or she does not like the subject of the assignment. Teachers may be frustrated by illegible handwriting, but they should remember that this is a manifestation of motor dysfunction and not necessarily a sign of detachment. Occupational therapists may suggest some modifications to improve writing skills, such as a lightweight desktop computer or a specially shaped, comfortable pen.
A modern gadget with a monument to unnecessary skills?
Additionally, you can designate someone to write for your child in class. However, when the difficulty really doesn't jump - it's worth noting that "handwriting in the twenty-first century is becoming an obsolete skill: with modern technologies Instead of handwriting, he suggests writing on a keyboard.” The writer's error correction pen excites different media for several days. Does handwriting alone still make sense? The Lerstint pen seems to fulfill the dreams of all those who recall with disgust school dictations and the need to falsify spelling rules.
Psychologist Natalya Karabuta says: “If a child puts a lot of pressure on the pen when writing, is distracted, wants to write quickly just to go about his business - all this is a sign of increased anxiety, which, of course, does not make children’s handwriting better. However, school scribbles are unlikely to become a role model if a formidable parent stands over the child like a “sword of Damocles”, scolding him for every incorrect connection. And this is quite understandable; under the influence of such pressure, the child’s anxiety will only increase, but self-confidence will seriously suffer. Remember yourself, sometimes a responsible task does not work out, and a prepared speech tends to fail, because you are hanging under the menacing, appraising gaze of your manager, even though you are absolutely confident in your knowledge and skills. What can we say about a child in whom adults, with such “Cerberian” behavior, develop constriction, an inferiority complex and an absolute dislike for writing as such. Remember, a necessary factor for a child to develop beautiful handwriting is parental patience and understanding.”
So, arm yourself with patience and understanding and begin training sessions.
There are quite a lot of means and methods that will help improve a child’s handwriting; let’s look at some of them in more detail.
Strengthening your hand
Beautiful handwriting largely depends on the hardness of a child's hand . The problem of poor handwriting, for example, in a first-grader, is precisely that the child does not have sufficient practice in working with his hands and fingers.
The following will help make your hand firmer, your fingers more skillful and resilient, and also develop good and correct pressure:
- various techniques,
- hatching,
- drawing a figure by points,
- game with small details (constructor, mosaic).
At preparing for school We advise you to pay more attention to drawing with colored pencils, sculpting platinum and shading, and not to independently mastering calligraphy. These activities will help strengthen your child's pen and quickly master beautiful writing.
Relax your hand
Baby puts too much pressure on the handle ? Need a relaxer. And sometimes not only the arms or shoulder girdle, but the whole body. The therapy package may include relaxing baths, aromatherapy, and more “cuddles” throughout the day.
And also try to instill in the child as much confidence as possible in unconditional parental love; strong pressure indicates internal anxiety. To relax your anxious child, try practicing at home not in standard workbooks, but in beautiful, comfortable large notebooks with characters from your favorite cartoons. In such company, it will be easier for the child to relax and problems with pressure will gradually disappear.
We teach beauty
One more trick - instilling in the schoolchild an appreciation of the beauty of letters . Indeed, in our computer world, it is quite difficult for a small person with a logical mind to understand why do you need to write beautifully? , the epistolary genre is not in fashion these days.
To do this, take an A4 sheet of paper and let the child draw in full width letters and letter combinations that are difficult for him and color them in different ways. Try to assemble some phrase from such beautifully written letters, for example “Happy Birthday” or “ Good morning" Several similar stories will help the child to establish himself in the idea that trying for the sake of beautiful handwriting costs.
Time and quantity
Time , which you allocate to work on improving handwriting and quantity training exercises must be dosed. You should not expect positive results from your child if every evening, instead of walking and communicating, you force him to rewrite various texts over and over again for hours.
15-20 minutes of exercise per day quite enough, besides, a student in grades 1-3 is unlikely to be able to concentrate his attention on a lesson for a longer period of time in order to efficiently complete the assigned task.
Write texts of no more than 4-6 lines and pay attention to the essence of what the child is copying. If the content will be interesting , the emotional component of the process will help the child write such a text beautifully.
You should not get carried away with the amount of text copied; due to the uneven load on the arm muscles, the child may experience pain in the hand, shoulder and neck. Remember how, during lectures at the institute, you, despite being tired, had to write for more than an hour after the teacher, so that at the end of the lecture, fatigue was felt throughout your whole body, and your middle finger had a dent from the pen. It's a terrible feeling, isn't it? You shouldn’t subject your schoolchild to such suffering, you don’t want spasms in his hand to start just by looking at the notebook.
Posture and workplace
Of course, it is important to ensure that what position does a child sit in while writing? . And if it is quite difficult to see how this process occurs at school, it is possible to monitor how correctly it sits at home. Please pay attention to the child that when writing you cannot bend one leg under you, your back should also be straight, your head should be slightly tilted, your elbows should not come off, it is necessary correct tilt notebook, while its middle should always be directed towards the middle of the chest.
Also remember to make sure your child held the pen correctly with your fingers . Talk to the teacher, if you cannot persuade the stubborn little one to take his school instrument in a way that is easier, it is possible to reconsider your attitude to the comments and to take the pen correctly, the teacher’s authoritative advice will help the child.
Many parents buy their child a toy for their home work place, which, due to its mobility, can also create difficulties with handwriting. If the child is quite lively and active, it is difficult for him to sit without moving. Every movement of the small butt or twitching of the legs sets the torsion in motion, the whole body vibrates, as a result of which the hand trembles and twitches. It is quite difficult to write beautifully in such a situation of constant movement, so it is better to buy a regular one with legs, without wheels and the ability to spin. Do not forget that the table must be sufficient in width and length so that the child can place a notebook and textbook on it.
Experiment with the pen
You may have never thought about it, but... How easy is the pen to write? , especially in children’s not yet very skilled fingers, seriously affects the quality of handwriting.
It is difficult for an adult to understand the essence of the process, because our hand is already positioned, the pressure has been developed, and we have more strength, but for a child this nuance sometimes becomes a very important factor. After all, writing with a ballpoint pen involves constant muscle tension.
Therefore, make it a rule: It’s a must to buy school pens for your little schoolchild. . In the stationery department, don’t be shy, let your child try to write with all the pens he likes, let him choose the one with which he thinks the letters are written easier.
Make sure that the pen does not scratch, catch, or scratch the paper; if the teacher does not mind, buy a gel pen if it is more convenient for the child to write. It is quite possible to introduce a 4th-5th grade student to such a representative of the retro style as a fountain pen. A stylish attribute will give the child a sense of uniqueness and status, because if you write with such a pen, you no longer want to rush, the very attitude towards the process of writing letters changes, making handwriting more beautiful and smoother.
Working on the elements
If a child connects and writes incorrectly certain elements , it is worth paying attention to their development.
Select words and texts using “indomitable” letters and combinations so that the development process is as precise as possible.
Buy copybooks and start writing hooks and sticks, and then practice “fusing” them into letters. Oblique lines are drawn in the copybooks, and it is also possible to trace letters along dotted contours.
Pay the child’s attention to keeping the line, practice so that the letters do not protrude beyond its boundaries and are more or less the same in size.
Let's brainstorm a solution
First of all, we show how to ride, then we hold the bike, and then at some point we let it go. And if we didn’t show how to do it, but just put the child on a bike, we wouldn’t have confidence that the child knew what he was doing.
It’s the same with first-graders - first the parents and the teacher show the child how to do homework, then for a while, for example, the first two quarters we do it together, and then we trust the child.
If a parent does homework instead of a child, he disables him, that is, he deprives the child of strength, he deprives the child of potential. But let's look at another point. Modern children and modern parents have very few opportunities to be together. And if a child, for various reasons, does not have enough time with a parent one on one, then this child will delay the implementation homework so that mom or dad can stay with him longer. And the point here is not in the child and his abilities, but in the productive attention that a parent can give.
In general, it is ideal when it is not a parent who teaches his child, but another person. The fact is that parents tend to get emotionally involved in doing homework because it is important to them. They want to be ideal teachers, and if a child does not understand something, they perceive it as their own failure. Therefore, it is really better for someone else to help your child with his homework.
