Reading Teachers Lounge

the Importance of Handwriting

• Shannon Betts and Mary Saghafi • Season 6 • Episode 12

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:07:40

6.12 The Importance of Handwriting

Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Hey Mary, I've heard a lot about handwriting on social media lately. Can we talk about more about how it's connected to reading? 

Mary Saghafi: Yes, I love talking about handwriting. 

Shannon Betts: I figured you would.

Welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. Come join the conversation with other curious teachers as they discover teaching strategies and resources to reach all of their learners. I'm Shannon. 

Mary Saghafi: And I'm Mary. And together we bring an honest and experienced point of view to the topics we cover to shed light in best practices.

Whether you're a new teacher seeking guidance, a seasoned pro looking for fresh ideas, or a curious parent, our community offers something for everyone. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and cozy up in the virtual lounge with us and eavesdrop on our professional conversations. Listen, learn, 

Shannon Betts: and immediately add to your bag of teaching tricks.

Find what works for your students with us in the Reading Teachers Lounge. [00:01:00] Welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. This is Season 6, Episode 12. Today we're going to be talking about the importance of handwriting. I'm Shannon Betz, and I'm a reading specialist. I've been teaching since 2002. And I'm here with my co host, 

Mary Saghafi: Mary Sagoffi.

Hey, everybody. Shannon, I'm so glad that we're going to talk a little bit about handwriting today. For me, the importance of explicit and systematic handwriting instruction is Such a foundational skill that I think sometimes gets bypassed because of the age of a child, not necessarily the developmental progression that they have reached yet.

So for me, I think that this is a really interesting topic to talk about, especially in conjunction with early literacy. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about why you shouldn't just isolate your handwriting instruction to just workbook pages or letting students independently complete those workbook pages, but really, you need to continue modeling it and explicitly bringing it into your [00:02:00] instruction to ensure that all students who haven't had that same level of proficiency as some other students kind of.

You know, especially past first grade, I would say kind of continue to develop those skills. So that's kind of like the overlay of what I want to talk about today. I bet in your second grade, especially second grade, you see like a wide range of skills. There are still some students who reverse their letters are forgetting.

So I've been working a lot 

Shannon Betts: with grip with pencil grip with some of my students. Cause I've noticed, you know, like a very strange kind of closed handed kind of grip rather than the pinch or grasp. But I've also, I will confess, you know, I've taught homeroom, kindergarten, first and second, and then also third.

I will say out of those homerooms where I focused handwriting the most was third grade because that's when I taught cursive. But I really didn't have a lot of time or resources in my other grade level classrooms to work on the handwriting other than, [00:03:00] you know, like during a writing conference or something, or during a one on one moment with the student, I might make some corrections or give them, you know, a pencil grip or something.

But otherwise, otherwise, I've never, I've never in my 21 plus years of instruction have ever explicitly taught handwriting. So that's why I brought this up because I'm just learning that it's connected to the science of reading. It's connected to foundational skills. It's connected to, you know, how students learn to read and the brain and all those connections.

I really didn't know that before. And so I, if I could have a time machine, I would go back and I would actually find a handwriting curriculum and resources and work when I'm more full time, but I really didn't in the classroom. I doubt I'm the only teacher out there. 

Mary Saghafi: No, I think that your story is really common.

My, my story is actually less common. And that is when I was teaching kindergarten in my first year, they actually sent me to a week long conference with handwriting without tears on learning without tears. And it seems [00:04:00] like it would be a very long week just to talk about handwriting. However, It was really valuable for me and my colleagues and we were all able to attend actually and it was amazing to see how connected handwriting skills are to all academic areas.

And so I do have kind of a different perspective and because I was able to really delve into the. Theory behind developing this program, it's developed by occupational therapists. So they really thought a lot about the motor work that goes into it and motor work connected to brain work. And so the, for me, the buy in was much stronger to really stay.

Like, and work with Fidelity to the curriculum because I knew how everything really connected together. I do have good news. They have lots and lots and lots of free webinars that teachers can take on their learning without tears. Okay, we'll link to [00:05:00] those in the show notes. Yeah, definitely. I want to link to them because it's so important.

But I think that's kind of like where I want to start talking. Like what is handwriting? Because I think you're right. A lot of teachers think, oh, it's one more task on my plate of skills that I need to teach. But I think we really need to stop thinking about skills in isolation and really think of them as skills.

putting them all together. So handwriting is a complex motor skill, so it involves gross movement and actually the whole body. You need to make sure that the student has their feet on the ground, that they are using their secondary hand to hold the paper in place, that their trunk is strong, that they're Grip is an appropriate grasp.

So before even picking up a pencil, there's a lot of things that teachers can do to make sure that students are working with these gross motor skills. And if you notice that these are some areas that are problematic, especially in early grades, This is where you can make some [00:06:00] observations. Maybe there does need to be an observation done by either O.

T. For fine motor skills or the physical therapist connected with the school. These things are really important and they're all connected. So first we know that it's a complex motor skill You want the student to be able to have these big gross motor skills, but then also the dexterity to manipulate tools and an early five year old and a late six year old in kindergarten have very different abilities to manipulate those tools depending on the practice that they've had, right?

So if you have an early five year old who had a preschool that really worked with using small little crayons, working on, on grip, making sure that they are. familiar with the strokes of developing their letters, they predictably would have a better time learning their letters. If you have a student who you can really notice who draws letters, who doesn't always make the same [00:07:00] strokes, who doesn't have automaticity, who's looking at that letter F and can't remember if the hook starts at the top or if they have to add it right at the end if they are making their Bs and Ds.

And we can talk a little bit more about that, but that manipulation is really key. And it also has to do with, like. Your visual and your motor memory using your mind's eye to, to, to know what letters to form. So, so this is like this, this is what makes it a complex motor skill, right? So this is where the buy in for me comes in.

Oh, I really have to make sure that there's a solid foundation here before I have that expectation of the student to be able to do these. letters with the same automaticity that I may expect from a student. And I think there was a point for me, especially when I was teaching kindergarten, when I had the end of my kindergarten year, the first year teaching, and I [00:08:00] started my second year and I had all those brand new kindergartners coming in.

Their skills were so drastically different from My class that graduated in May and really like thinking about all of the teaching that went on that first year, especially in relation to handwriting. I went, there's so much work that has to be done. And so I know I talk a lot about my kids, but when my oldest daughter was at home on the for her kindergarten year.

doing virtual instruction. Her handwriting I noticed like really early on was just not very developed. And so we had to do a lot of interventions. And I think that that is very true for many students who are now third graders, fourth graders, or below that grade. They didn't necessarily get all of that instruction in the earlier grades.

Also fifth graders who maybe were entering third grade at that time. Who needed [00:09:00] a little bit more support they may, there may be a gap in that.

Shannon Betts: My young son is like that too. He struggles with pressing his pencil down hard and then like, you know, it's very difficult to read his writing. I'm also flashing back.

I remember maybe year 12 in my teaching. I was a reading specialist at that first school that I taught at. I think I told you about this girl. I'm going to call her Sally, but she'd been retained in Kindergarten or first grade. So I worked over there for three years in a row. I either worked over there for two years in kindergarten and one year in first grade, or then the first year in kindergarten, two years in first grade.

But I had it for three years in a row and I had it for reading and in math. So like I got to know the student pretty well. We were constantly working on the most basic skills. I'm talking letter sounds and number names. I mean, I would say eight, eight, I'd show the symbol eight. We'd trace it, I'd show her eight.

I'd come back a day later and she'd be like, Five, you know, like she did not remember eight. She did not remember the sound or whatever. And I just, we could not, I mean, the whole SST team, we were just trying to figure [00:10:00] out like, what, why can the student like not remember, even though we're explicitly working on, we're doing multi sensory things, all this stuff.

Then one day she was helping me like clean up a game. And I watched her like pick up Unifix cubes and blocks, and she picked them up in the strangest way. I mean, like she used like the side of her hand and she was just like, She didn't even put things in the palm of her hand. It was like, sideways and upside down and all these things.

And I was like, I have never seen someone pick up toys this way. So I reached out to a friend of mine from college who was a occupational therapist. And I said, what is going on with, this is strange. And I described how this student. Picked up things and she said, well, how does a student hold a pencil?

So I went next day and checked and it was the exact same way. She's kind of gripped it on the side and all these things. And my friend, I mean, even without meeting her said, I don't think she has the pincher grasp. You know, at all. And, you know, and [00:11:00] so she said, you know, which the pincher grasp is like when you're kind of that's how you typically hold a pencil where you're kind of doing your index finger.

Yeah. And your middle finger. And so she sent me a huge she faxed me a huge packet of papers. Yeah. Like all these Tracing mazes things and tracing shapes things and tracing letter pages and then she also said, you know have the student for like 20 minutes at a time, put coins in a piggy bank, like just push it through the little slot in the piggy bank.

She was like any kind of little bitty motion where she is just. Sticking something and putting it in a small space, whatever you can do, that's that kind of game. Like, stop the intervention, stop the memorization of the numbers and letters, just work on that for a little while. And the most amazing thing happened, like, first off, she got better with her motor skills pretty quickly.

Yeah. Right on that as the interventionist, and then when I went to go work on the letter sounds and number names, she learned them and remembered them and retained them. And so when you [00:12:00] were saying that, you were saying it's a visual and motor memory. Yes. And so I'm wondering, like, at the time, I was just like, there's some developmental milestone step where, like, she couldn't get the pinch or grasp, and so her brain was like stuck on this one little flagstone and was not gonna go the next step.

Yeah. You know? And so. Now that you're telling me about the science and like the research behind it and the developmental stages of this, now I'm seeing how it's the more connected and I understand that student a little better, but that was one time in particular where I did see that link between those motor skills and the rest of the thinking of the brain.

Mary Saghafi: Well, if we think about it, there's so many complex neural pathways that are developing in the brain at this early age. And they're developing gross motor skills, fine motor skills, academic cognitive skills. And When we talk about working memory, you know, I've, I've said this many [00:13:00] times, it's the ability to identify the priority of what you need at that moment in the filing cabinet of your mind, right?

And so if you are weak in one of those skills that the teacher may assume you're automatic in, or have automaticity for then It's going to it's going to fall apart. Those complex skills that are built on top of it are going to fall apart. And so that's why there's so much frustration. I have to kind of go back again a little bit because often just like I say, like the speech teacher is my best friend.

I always go and I'm asking and curious about what that means. The occupational therapist is the same. So if you suspect that there's a student who has It's dysgraphia, dysgraphia being a disconnect between the ability to write what you want to say and having that pen, paper, mind disconnect you are going to want to talk with an occupational therapist.

And occupational therapists at school are really tricky [00:14:00] because in order to get services at a public school, there has to be a definite Discrepancy between their ability to manage their tasks and sometimes what I hear, especially on my advocate side of things is well, we can just teach them to type.

Once we teach them to type, it'll be fine. 

We live in the digital age. 

And, and it's an, it's a but and answer because yes, technology is able to free up some of those discrepancies that can be problematic. However there's some really good research right now that has come out and lots of different research actually.

But what I can say is by. Providing adequate instruction on letter formation we can create an opportunity for let, actually, let me say it like this, research suggests that the [00:15:00] process of forming letters while handwriting activates neural pathways that are associated with strong reading skills.

And in fact, handwriting plays a crucial role in the formation of these brain networks, which underlie the development of strong reading skills. These brain connections are only made when children are engaged in handwriting activities, not when tracing or typing letters. So that early development stage, being able to process cognitive information while developing that automaticity of being able to write activates these neural pathways.

And it can make, you can then predict that children are going to be more successful with their reading skills that way. And that's a James and Berninger study out of. 2019, actually which 

is recent. So putting just giving an accommodation like typing is it might hamper their reading development [00:16:00] and their reading.

I don't 

want to say hamper it because I think what what is critical is the conversation to have before giving an accommodation, like Just allowing typing or just allowing word predictability is ensuring that appropriate instruction has been put in place for all of the foundational things. So that might be handwriting instruction because So if handwriting instruction has not already been provided, it's not appropriate to just jump ahead and allow for typing.

So there is this, like, progression that needs to be followed. And I think that it also kind of goes hand in hand with Having an explicit sequenced way of learning letters in phonics instruction is similar in handwriting instruction too. We can group letters into letters that are, So first, you're going to start with all of the uppercase letters.

Why do you start with uppercase? Sticks. Because a lot of them use [00:17:00] sticks, but also they all start at the top when you're forming those letters. And my favorite handwriting without tears song for all of kindergarten is, where do we start our letters at the top? Where do we start the letters at the top?

If you're going to make a letter, you better, better, better, you better start it at the top. Having that in mind helps this progression of what is the differentiation between an uppercase and a lowercase letter, making sure, and then being able to have that movement into, oh, yes, now we're going to also be using lowercase letters, so up to pre K, they kind of recommend using uppercase only, and then You should also be able to recognize lowercase, but in kindergarten is when you want to be able to do uppercase and lowercase.

Forming them. Forming them. Forming. Mm hmm. Yep. Identifying is also kind of a mixed bag. That's okay. But the lowercase letters are different because they start at varying points. Some start with a small c, and they call that magic c in the handwriting [00:18:00] without tears progression. Some of them Are going to drop below the line above the line understanding where the top line is and having that visualization of how big the letter is supposed to be in the spacing between it.

All of these are really complex things that need to be shared with students so that they are then intentional about how they form their letters. 

I

Shannon Betts: did like in season two number, I was. It's just starting to teach kindergarten before my car accident. And so I had two months under my belt with foundations and they did, there was handwriting as a component of foundations and they had, they called that, you know, the top line, like the plane line or the skyline or the grass line and the worm line.

And that was cute little language for my kindergartners to, as they were learning the letter name and the letter sound, they were learning the formation at the same time. 

Mary Saghafi: And that part is so critical and and then that also comes into our what what does it look like when you're doing [00:19:00] explicit handwriting instruction?

It means that you're doing the I do, we do, you do progression. 

Shannon Betts: They have specific rhymes and like. Sort of chance that we had to say for each of those started this line, then go down, then go back up to the something line, then go down again, you know, like, we had to like, kind of repeat the same directions over and over to help students.

That is exactly right. And that's 1 of those things where it seems very boring to the teacher because we already know how to do it, but it's not boring to the student because that explicit instruction is necessary at that developmentally. 

Mary Saghafi: Well, I think too we're. Like just to remind all of our listeners, we're not talking about hours on end of droning on and on.

These should be very short, very quick, to the point lessons. And you know, they should have enough practice to master it, enough practice so that they can go back and evaluate their work which ties into our metacognition and making sure that they can plan okay, [00:20:00] or evaluate or organize their work.

It's really amazing. So what it would look like when I was teaching especially in my co taught class, I'll, I'll use my first grade co taught class as an example. I would do 10 minutes of instruction, and then we would split the group in half, so I would have half of the class, and we would go through our lesson, which was 10 minutes long, but I was talking, we were doing, we were chanting together, our feet were on the floor, everybody's ready, put your pencil in the air, and next one, let's write the letter M, little line down, climb up, pump over, bump the line, climb up, Bump the line, you know, just like you were speaking.

And as soon as we were done with our line all together, I would say things like you're doing so great. I want you to look and see what do you notice is your best letter that you've done. Circle it, give me a thumbs up so I can come and see. Let's do a celebration for your best work. Now while you're looking, I want you to find another one that you can make a little tweak to.

What can you do to improve that? [00:21:00] another letter on your line. If they're all perfect, I still want you to improve one more, right? Or if you need help evaluating, I can come by and help you give me a hand signal. It was quick, fast, but it was also a drill. And so I wanted the students to kind of catch up and keep up with me to do it that way.

It's a bit intense, but it also is positive fun and it usually has a musical element that's involved with it. They're all engaged. 

Shannon Betts: I mean, they're all writing and moving pencils and doing things. They're not just staring in space listening to the teacher 

Mary Saghafi: talk. Well, the other important part about this example is that, Explicit instruction is then it gives you an opportunity to weave it into your other instruction as you're doing math.

You know, we're talking about, you know, making the number four and how you make a little line down across the, there's other little like rhymes that go with it. Jump up to the top. Yahoo, I did it. Little kind of things that, that the kids pick up on, but then they [00:22:00] know what I would also teach them, especially in these early grades.

You should be able to hear my voice inside your head as you're doing your letter 

Shannon Betts: sounds. Which is why I repeat the same direction, Sobrena. 

Mary Saghafi: Yes, and we have to keep in mind, about until age 7, kids do not have an internal dialogue. So we need to provide that internal dialogue for them. And that's why we need to make it this way.

So, it gives a lot of an opportunity to establish a routine so that kids can be familiar with it. It should be teacher led and active. It follows a gradual release model. There should be that I do, and then a we do. An independent dictation is the perfect opportunity for this point. But as I am doing the I do, I'm going to be really explicit in modeling my thinking.

Oh, I'm starting with a capital letter. Capital letters start at the top. Here is my capital letter C. [00:23:00] C, big curve, bump the bottom line, move to the next one. I am going to reiterate what's going on in my brain. Ooh, I want to make sure that my sentence is lined up right in the margin. When I start a sentence, this is where I start it.

I'm going to write to the end, hmm, I'm thinking ahead, do I have enough space to continue writing on this line or do I need to move down to the next line? That's why we can't have just. Independent morning work to go and follow a workbook just to practice. Don't 

Shannon Betts: just go do your handwriting packet.

There needs to be that I do, we do, you do part of it to get that internal dialogue in there. And then I want to guess also, when it was the students independent turns, were you walking around and observing very closely, making sure that, you know, checking their pencil grip, checking the pressure on the paper 

Mary Saghafi: and things like that?

Yes, and you [00:24:00] know, I mentioned that before when you said it before, if you have a student who is having some difficulty, have the whole class practice, right, really hard for this word, right, really soft for the next word, can you find a medium in between that and give them opportunities, you can see a lot of Things when you observe stuff like that.

So yeah, when I'm doing the, that independent work, it could be explicit phonics instruction. It could be you're doing your your dictation words for your phonics lesson, and you could still be noticing does so and so right there. B starting with the big line down and then a little curve. Do they start their D starting with the little curve line up down?

Noticing what is that developmental progression? 

Shannon Betts: Especially for kids who might be reversing. It might be really, we only see those reversals sometimes when we pick up their writing later, like maybe on a spelling test [00:25:00] or something. So yeah, it would be really nice in the moment to catch it and be like, I wonder how they're forming, how they even write these letters.

Mary Saghafi: Well, and I think this is a good opportunity to, to reinforce dyslexia doesn't mean that you just reverse your letters. And it is okay to have occasional reversals in kindergarten, first grade, a little bit into second grade, but they should be doing most self correcting. You should always.

correct a student if they are doing a reversal. That, that's, that's not the point. You should always correct it to make sure that they're 

Shannon Betts: doing like if they reverse the 

Mary Saghafi: three. Yeah. It looks like an E. Okay. When we talk about dyslexia and reversing letters, what it, we're really talking about is like, imagine a chair.

If you have a chair, a chair is Sitting on all four legs. If you put the chair upside down, is that still a chair? Yes, it is still a chair. If you put it on its side, is it still a chair? Yes. If we have letters, and [00:26:00] we re invert it, or like, let's say we take a D and we, we turn it over, we can flip it, we can make it a B, we can make it a P, we can take the B and make it a Q, and reverse all of these things.

That is not always grounded in all students. Okay. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have dyslexia. The more severe it is may predict that they have some sort of dyslexia, but that is only one factor. Dyslexia is an unexplained difficulty with letters and sounds, and it has to do with a number of different brain processes, not just reversing your letters.

When we're talking about this, if you have a student identified with dyslexia or you suspect it, they will likely not be forming their letters the same way as all of the other students. A lot of times what I notice observationally is that they try to problem [00:27:00] solve or create solutions that fit the way that their brain wants them to do it in their own creative way.

And that might be because they missed the directions that you shared. It might be because they are more of a drawing kid and they are drawing their letters, it might be a number of other reasons but it still needs to be corrected and you need to figure out what's the root of it and how can the student then create a strategy so that they don't reverse their letters.

Sometimes that's putting your two thumbs up and looking at the B and D and making a bed with your hands. Sometimes it might be looking at a visual on the wall. Sometimes it might be a baseball bat. Start my B with a baseball bat and then make the ball. Start with a drum and then make my drum stick to make a D.

Those are Lots of strategies, 

Shannon Betts: but letters aren't the chair is what you're saying. Like a chair can be the cheddar can be upside down and can be sideways and it's still a chair, but a [00:28:00] letter if it's upside down is going to be a different 

Mary Saghafi: letter. Exactly. Okay. Yes, exactly. 

Shannon Betts: So they have to be precise when we need students to have that understanding.

That the letters must be 

Mary Saghafi: precise. Exactly. It has to be precise. And it has to come quickly and easily. And we can't move forward unless that happens. Because the cognitive load can get filled quickly. Is the cognitive load being filled with how to write the letter? We're hoping that it doesn't. It should move and switch to that automaticity.

It's interesting. We're using 

Shannon Betts: some of the same words to describe reading and handwriting, like automaticity, fluency. Those are things that we say with letter naming, letter sound naming, word recognition, and then we're also saying those things with the formation of it. So I am, it's interesting that we're using those same words to describe 

Mary Saghafi: it.

Well, it's because it's still, it's complex. [00:29:00] Reading is complex and it requires a lot of. Skills, especially as an adult. It's so hard to remember your own development of these skills that it feels like it should be automatic. And when you observe it in other students, you might see that it is more automatic than in other students.

And so you have to really like hone in on what it is. But the, the crux of it is you want to free up that cognitive Load, right? Because then it 

Shannon Betts: can move on to the next thing. So if you're just focused on that letter formation of the B, you might not necessarily remembering the sound. Exactly. You know, and then then you're definitely not gonna be ready to comprehend or do the vocabulary for the words and start with the B.

Correct. So that's those where they stand on each other, and you have to get automaticity so that then you can free up to work on the more complicated thing to more work on the more complicated thing. You 

Mary Saghafi: are absolutely spot on about that. Yep, exactly. There's a really great quote here. I love [00:30:00] understood.

org. If there are any parents or teachers listening the articles are so To the point and easy to read but basically Sheldon H. Horowitz says handwriting is a multi sensory activity. As you form each letter, your hand shares information with the language processing areas of your brain. As your eyes track what you're writing, you engage these areas, and the same goes if you say the letter sounds and the words when you write.

Shares 

Shannon Betts: same brain information space. I love that. 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Yeah, right. It's 

Shannon Betts: so important. We talked a lot about the language processing. And so that same area of the brain is being lit up. 

Mary Saghafi: I think the other part that I really want to just kind of not leave off the table is that existing handwriting booklets.

that are often used in classrooms for independent work. They risk this development of bad habits. Okay. And it's really hard to break a bad habit especially in handwriting. [00:31:00] So it's hard to break reversals. It's hard to break. A poor pencil grip. Yeah, or starting your letters at the bottom instead of starting some of them at the top.

So for this reason, I really want to preach early literacy instruction must include handwriting instruction. So you're saying pre K? Kindergarten? I'm saying pre k, kindergarten, and even at home, parents who are working with their children, if we can have some common language that is used at school, that parents can also help, so sending home some handwriting activities is not a bad idea, it doesn't always need to be You know, it might be, here's the song that we've been working on in class to remember where our letters start.

Have your child practice these and, you know, I'm recalling like frog jump letters, which are the very beginning letters that they teach in this series. So it's F, B and let me go back. [00:32:00] So I'm thinking 

Shannon Betts: as a parent or as a teacher, if I look at maybe two diff separate handwriting packets, and I'm trying to decide which one is more quality, which one is going to, you know, have more impact, if it's a packet that just basically only has lines on it, where the kids are copying and tracing.

But doesn't have any explicit directions doesn't have any chance like start the uppercase at the top and sort of those explicit routines that are repeated then that's not the best handwriting packet. I need to have the one that were maybe there's fewer practice ones on the first few pages because it's reviewing the rhymes and the chance and the directions and then they have the opportunity to develop that fluency.

Mary Saghafi: Right, and I think that this is super important to reiterate to parents too. You don't want parents teaching, you want parents to reteach or reinforce. That's really the key. So you shouldn't be sending something home that the student has not had a lot of practice with at school. Like, [00:33:00] At least five rounds in kindergarten of practice 

Shannon Betts: so that the child could go to the parents say no, we make an M by starting at this line and going down and then going back up to this line and going to the over the hump.

The student needs to be able to repeat that rhyme. Don't sit at home 

Mary Saghafi: until they know it. And that's really where, where it's really important. So we want to make sure that we do that well and that that then accelerates or amplifies what the reading development looks like at home. So, you know, as they're sounding out their letters you want to make sure they know you know, I'm writing up.

Or, pet the dog, are they actually writing a P? If they accidentally switch it and write a Q, and you sound it out with them, say the Q sound. Say, what? Were you trying to say that? You know, and reinforcing that each letter has its own unique sound or sounds that go with it. And [00:34:00] you know, we want to make sure that we're just being accurate and, and really reinforcing that letters have sound meaning.

So I think that that's that's it. So handwriting then can accelerate the reading development once we do it really well. So keep that in mind. That's the really good news. So you're going to closely connect your reading instruction with your writing instruction. So we are modeling throughout all of the lessons.

If you are modeling the sentence that you're writing in a science Transcribed journal or science lab notebook, you might then reinforce again. Where do we start our letters? Do you have an appropriate space between each of your words? What goes at the end of your sentence? I'm really talking about conventions again.

Or having students you know, model correcting their work. I think one of the most powerful things that we can do, especially in early grades, is to make an error and allow the students to catch it, or give them that [00:35:00] opportunity to be smarter than the teacher. It's so powerful, and it really Secures their learning and understanding where you've given an 

Shannon Betts: example of, like, when the students would look at their own in choices and like Circle the one that was the best.

Yeah, I could see them doing that for the student to for the teacher like look at oh that I wrote on my chart paper which one do you think was You know, the one that was best written because that really is you know, evaluation is one of those highest levels of Bloom's taxonomy. And so that really is encouraging that higher order thinking and encouraging that self analysis and that self awareness in a fun way rather than just pointing out a mistake.

Mary Saghafi: I 100 percent agree. Yep. I think that that's. I actually really love it, too. If you can give them an opportunity to circle something that's more permanent and still have, like, an eraser on it so that it doesn't look perfect, that's [00:36:00] okay. It's okay to make mistakes and have some red marks on your paper.

I think kids are more and more resistant to that right now, and so we want to make sure that we're, you know, just allowing for, um, for those teaching opportunities. So I'm thinking about some teachers, 

Shannon Betts: you know, out in the field. 

Mary Saghafi: So there might 

Shannon Betts: be some that don't have handwriting resources. Okay. So that might be one issue.

I'd like you to address what to do for that. And then also what if there's, you know, like they're in one of those like non negotiable rigor, rigor, rigor places, you know, and they are struggling to sort of bring to their administration team, like. The justification that, like, I'm going to take this 10 15 minutes a day, and I'm going to explicitly teach and work on handwriting.

Like, I could see some teachers maybe getting pushback from that, and, you know, and not feeling like they have the time, even though you will catch up in time later by doing [00:37:00] this explicit instruction on the front end. You know, the rest, maybe the spring semester goes so much more smoothly, you know, with this handwriting in place.

But You know, what can teachers do if either they're getting that pushback, need to have that justification, need to, you know, be given that permission slip to take this time, and then also for resources. What to do. Yeah, I don't want teachers spending 100 of their own money buying handwriting without tiers workbooks for every 

Mary Saghafi: student.

Right, and I don't necessarily think that that's the answer. I do think going On to reputable websites. I do love the webinars that are part of the learning without tears programming. So if you don't, if you aren't a part of that, that's okay. You can still go on for free and you can still watch some of these.

Get some training. If you are looking for a quick, what can I do right now sort of thing, or I have two students in mind, you can actually download some free handwriting screeners. And I know that the Learning Without Tears website has those [00:38:00] free screeners. I've used them. I also, We're going to put those in our show notes.

Yep. It's easy to do that. So I will definitely link those. The other one that I love to use is by this occupational therapist called Cherry Lee. And she has a screener and it's really an informal screener, but it's one that I use whenever I get a new student. I think you talked about it last season in our assessment episode.

I think so too. Yeah, and it's one of the ways that I can really look and address a lot of things that are going on with a student based on their writing. So I want to see, are they writing within the margins? Do they have really large handwriting? Is it appropriate or inappropriately large or small? Are there spacing?

There's lots of questions. So she has a checklist that you can I think I will link her entire her entire assessment. It's a big PDF and she also has some slides that go along with it too. So if you need some [00:39:00] more explanation of what the screener is and how it works, it's more OT friendly language, but I think that it could be really valuable, especially if you have.

are really lacking resources right now. Common Core does have in the first and, in kindergarten and first grade, that legible print needs to be written. And this is through all the states for Common Core. There are a few states who have adapt, adopted cursive. So I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about Curse of handwriting, too.

Can I, 

Shannon Betts: can I ask one really quick question? 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, of course. That came up when you were thinking that, 

Shannon Betts: I was working, I was diagramming sentences with my seventh graders the other day, and one of the sentences had an object of preposition that was a proper noun, you know, so it needed a capital letters for the proper noun, and so I was looking over the student's diagramming, and the student had capitalized, like, the letter A in isolation in the middle of the sentence.

And 

Mary Saghafi: I was like, 

Shannon Betts: dude, like, [00:40:00] you can't, you know, like, I need this to be lowercase, like, put the lowercase 

Mary Saghafi: everywhere, your audience, you 

Shannon Betts: know, like put the lowercase everywhere, except the first letter of the sentence and capital, the first letters of capital nouns, like, I in isolation, like, was I 

Mary Saghafi: nitpicking there?

But like, to me, but because I see that 

Shannon Betts: a lot in upper grade students where they're just have this mixed case fonts, you know, yeah. But it's really, but I feel like it's signaling something more than just, oh, he's just wanting to write a capital A. 

Mary Saghafi: I totally agree with that. So I've been seeing it more and more, especially with my upper grade students too.

And for me I will tell them, I'm really picky. I'm really picky. You know why? Because if you do it right the first time, I don't have to be picky. But if you know it, and you're doing it, then I won't bother you. If you don't know it, I'm going to be picky because I need to correct this work. And one of [00:41:00] the big things I don't think I have the quote right in front of me right now.

But I, I know it's in one of the articles linked.

Shannon Betts: Hello listeners, it's Shannon here and I want to take a quick moment to tell you about one way I'm committing to my health this year. I've started making green chef meals again and my family and I are loving them. The food is delicious and easy to prepare. There's tons of sauces, and spices, and other ways to add flavor to the meals.

There are also tons of gluten free options for me each week. I use the app a lot. It makes it easy to make changes to the menu choices and pause a week if needed. The great news is, they've given me free boxes to give away. So if you're interested in trying Green Chef, Head to the show notes for this episode to get the link.

Or you can visit www reading lounge quick links and click on the for Happy cooking. Watch our stories on Instagram [00:42:00] to see some of the meals I'm making.

Mary Saghafi: Unfortunately, students are judged on the legibility of their handwriting. And that can really impact their score. Even if the content is the same, the legibility of using appropriate conventions in their sentences and the legibility, people put judgments on that. It is not something that we're all proud of doing, but it is just a fact that if you have very messy handwriting you don't take the craftsmanship seriously in, you know, trying really your best to put it forward, as long as you have the ability you know, we want to make sure that our students are meeting expectations, and I think that it also comes across This big developmental spectrum, and this has to [00:43:00] do with reading math skills in general.

In elementary school, there are lots of skills that have to be taught. And some of them have more of a focus than others. And it depends on which teacher you're in, which classroom you're in, you know what the priorities are that year. And I think that. In some cases, there might be a few children out there who have never been corrected.

They've never been told this N is an uppercase N and you may not put an uppercase N in the middle of the word. That's not appropriate. And so, I don't think that there is a harm. in calling attention to it and, and making those expectations known. I think that there is a care in a way that you can do it.

I think that there's a purpose behind a way that you can, you know, reiterate that. So 

Shannon Betts: what I'm afraid did is that I want to know that this, this other thing is a proper noun. Like that was part of the focus of the sentence. And I'm confused when I see this capital a, [00:44:00] because that's, that's signaling confusion to me.

Cause I'm only looking for capital letters in proper nouns. 

Mary Saghafi: I mean, even if we're talking about typing as well, if you are typing in all uppercase letters, that has a different connotation. You're yelling. You're yelling. And so we need to make students aware too that that can also be the same when you are writing.

So I think that that's true. Yeah. Okay. I didn't mean to take you on a tangent. I just No, I think that's a really important one too. And just because A student didn't learn it in your classroom when they were in your second grade classroom as the third grade teacher just pick it up, you know, they just might not have been available to hear that message that one day in that one moment.

So, well, I 

Shannon Betts: think piggybacking on that I was in a first grade classroom I was actually just subbing one day, and they were working on a practice page of capitalizing I in isolation capitalizing the proper names. And I told them I said okay when I'm going around, I'm not only gonna be checking for [00:45:00] these capital letters.

But I'm going to be checking, do you have random capital letters other places? And I need you to fix those. And I thought, okay, let me, let me correct it in these first graders so I don't see them in seventh grade. 

Mary Saghafi: Yes. Well, and I think that that's very true of teachers who have taught in lots of different grade levels.

You notice those things, they can creep on up. And so I probably had to 

Shannon Betts: correct it in five or six students. Where they had, in that first grade class, where they had just random capital letters, sometimes a capital L, you know, in the middle of 

Mary Saghafi: a word or something. I think the other piece is. You have to know when to pick your battles as well, so I'm not saying that if you are letting a few things go every now and then, that you're doing it wrong, but just know that there is, there is an impact on that, and I would say parents can help reiterate the craftsmanship story at home as well, you know, taking care of your work means that you are really doing your best, and if you are, you know, putting a capital [00:46:00] letter N in the middle of a word, That's not your best work.

That's something that you can go back and make better. Do you think they're doing it? I 

Shannon Betts: will say, when I've watched my students write, sometimes they purposely do capital B and D. Yes. Because they know 

Mary Saghafi: they're going to reverse it. I'm so glad you brought that 

Shannon Betts: up. Yes. So I have seen students do that even in like third or fourth grade when we're working on dictation and I'll be like, Nope, so I'll help you form the B and D.

Let's do it with our hands or whatever. But like, I'm not gonna let that slide. 

Mary Saghafi: No, I think I mean, I think that not letting handwriting slide is one of those. Big skills. Because then it allows them to develop that early on. Like I said, it's really hard to break those habits. So you got to break it sometime.

Might as well be in the earlier grades. It doesn't mean you're breaking a spirit. It means that you're, I will say this too. I loved my one my daughter's one teacher in [00:47:00] kindergarten, you know, first grade. She was obsessed with writing an I with a heart above the I, obsessed. And the teacher said, in my classroom, you're going to form your letters properly.

You may do that in other places. And, oh, she was so mad. She just, she, she literally said, She's crushing my creative spirit. It's like a family joke now. We just laugh about it all the time. But I went in and I thanked her for it. Good, good. We were able to then have that discussion too. There are different expectations for different Places, teachers and settings.

And so in this case, you need to follow her expectations and there's nothing wrong with that. She's just trying to make you the best that you can be in her class. And so, you know, but it is, it is kind of funny 

Shannon Betts: crushing the spirit. Okay. Let's get back to curse. Let's go back to cursive. I was in a fifth grade class and the teacher was introducing cursive the other day.

And yeah, it was interesting too, cause she she had the students [00:48:00] analyze And compare like they kind of circled which ones looked different compared as capital and lowercase. And then also, which ones look different in terms of print versus cursive. 

Mary Saghafi: Oh, that's great. Oh, I love that. I think that's a great way to introduce it too.

And then, and 

Shannon Betts: then they had a cursive handwriting. Handwriting book, which was great. And so they were going through and reading the precise directions from it, which I think is good. And they were talking also they had to analyze and find which letters needed to have a pencil pickup during the formation of the letter versus which ones could be formed without picking up the pencil.

Mary Saghafi: Well, and that's the main difference between cursive and you know, in manuscript. So is picking up the pencil. Sometimes. You know, you may have heard it that cursive is quicker because you don't pick up your pencil. There's been some studies that have shown that's actually not quite true.

And we're not talking about the, like, flourished cursive of, like, you know, the way my grandmother used to write. And [00:49:00] what we're talking about right now is making sure that students have instruction to be able to read and interpret. In my opinion, this is the first one that comes to mind our primary sources.

So you should be able to read the constitution that's written in cursive. And so being able to read primary sources for me, it's a really big deal for cursive instruction. There is a small amount of students who really benefit from cursive instruction too, specifically kids who have dyslexia. Not all children who have dyslexia, but there have been some studies that have shown.

I think. And this is just from my own observation. I think that students then do better because they are more equipped to handle and understand writing letters at a more advanced way. So they've practiced it many, many, many times with manuscript. But then your B and D is formed very differently in cursive handwriting.

And that flow kind of goes a little bit different. So [00:50:00] I think that they, For my observation in the number of students who I've taught cursive handwriting to, which is about Seven students that I've been tutoring and we go through the whole progression. I have seen a bigger impact because they are then more ready to handle the handwriting instruction than they were when they first started in the early literacy.

Like pre k first grade second pre k kindergarten. 

Shannon Betts: So what you're saying is for your tutoring students who are dyslexic, you actually do cursive if they're older, and then you go back and do some print handwriting instruction to 

Mary Saghafi: practice? I, I go back and I do the whole progression and sequence of cursive instruction.

And so when you're doing that, you're working on precisely writing those letters. And I think that it's like that precise following direction that for my observation, that's what the students are better equipped to handle at that time is doing all of the instruction that's required because [00:51:00] you may still have students who are not yet diagnosed with dyslexia, but you may start to notice it during handwriting instruction.

There may be some things that kind of stick out to you. So, so there's that. I, I have an article that's linked. It's from Education Week. It's actually from 2016, which is surprising because I did not read this. And I've actually been involved in some handwriting discussions, especially at IEP meetings.

But this was the first time I came across this one. And what it really comes back to is that When they were forming the Common Core Standards, they had a discussion and feedback from teachers and the teacher said, we don't really feel like we have the resources or the time to really devote to.

Handwriting instruction and cursive. Let's focus a little bit more on technology and making sure that students can type. And so technology took the priority and it was not included. And that's really the reason that it's not included. Some other states [00:52:00] have actually gone back and re adopted cursive into their curriculum standards, but not in all states.

So, The language in the Common Course says that students should be able to print all upper and lowercase letters. So handwriting is included in the 

Shannon Betts: Common Course. But like, it's because the curriculum resources don't always accompany it? Yes. It's like. You know, we, we kind of gloss over that. 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, no, definitely.

So I think that that's, it's important. I think what we, what the reality is, is after first grade and you most places that are actually doing handwriting instruction with fidelity then they immediately switch over to the technology and focus on typing. And what we need to understand is that students.

Do better when they are using pencil paper or a digital [00:53:00] tool to actually form and write their letters because it's creating some cognitive neural pathways that are really essential to making connections with the brain and reading and writing and so we don't want to move too quickly. into teaching typing skills.

We don't want to not teach typing skills. We don't want to neglect handwriting for the sake of teaching typing. So I think handwriting is an essential, is a really essential skill. I also think typing is an essential skill. It just happens to sometimes not be as well understood, I think, by teachers.

And, and I think that's kind of what the main thing that we're getting at here. Well, and it seems like 

Shannon Betts: it can be done pretty quickly. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't take forever and that you can even integrate it with your phonics instruction. 

Mary Saghafi: That, that's really the thing. And you can integrate it with all of your instruction.

Like you 

Shannon Betts: said, the science sentence. Yeah, journal work. The science journal, 

Mary Saghafi: yeah. Note taking [00:54:00] spelling tests, math worksheets grade level fluency expectations increase if handwriting fluency

let me, let me say that again. As long as the students have developed the automaticity. They have freed up that brain space. They're not thinking about how to form their letters. They are better able to then focus on the content that you're teaching. That's, that's really what it comes down to. Let's talk about some strategies that I like to use.

And maybe you can throw in some of some strategies that you like to use that are like multi sensory. Yeah. I'm just remembering 

Shannon Betts: my third grade classroom. I, you know, cause my first few years teaching, this was like in the early two thousands, I didn't have. workbooks, but I knew third grade, this was before Common Core, so I think cursive was in my standards.

Okay. Like two sets of standards to go to Georgia. I know. So I, you know, I got some random sheets, you know, I think I bought a little workbook or something from Schoolbox. And then I would, I kind of, I kind of taught the letters pretty quickly, but I really didn't have a lot of time to teach it. So then I did during [00:55:00] morning work, I had like a thought of the day and I would write it in cursive.

You know, like I would take some sort of famous quotation and I'd write it in cursive and they would have to copy it. And so they would that was part of their morning work, you know, we also did like mountain math and DOL and all these other 

Mary Saghafi: things. Oh, I remember those well. I'm dating myself with this statement.

I'm with you, Shannon. That's where we started. No, I think it's great. So With Orton Gillingham, handwriting is almost always a part of an Orton Gillingham traditional lesson, and so you know, you can think of, like, the ways of skywriting letters, or maybe they're using the sand trays. Sand trays are something that often people think about when you're doing Orton Gillingham instruction.

Also Handwriting Without Tears is kind of famous for their wet, dry, try methods, so wet, dry, try, I'll link to this on Instagram, but basically you start with a dry chalkboard, you have a little [00:56:00] piece of chalk that your students are grasping, and they are writing their letter, and they're going to write it first, and If they are really just beginning, the teacher may write it first for them, so that you do it correctly, and then they take a wet little paper towel, and they erase over it with using the same strokes, and then they flip it over, and it's dry, and you dry it with the dry one, so they're still doing it correctly, and then they get a chance to use the chalk, and go over it one more time.

So, wet dry try is a really great way. I also like doing a similar one with gel in a freezer bag. So like just your really cheap hair gel and you stick it in the big Ziploc bag and you tape it up really good on all sides. Key. With duct tape. Duct tape. And then yeah, and you can write your letters on that as a little writing mat.

Or shaving cream is always a big favorite. I try to bust out the shaving cream, maybe like Four times a year and it's really good cleaner for the dust. I know 

Shannon Betts: you would walk by [00:57:00] the class, the kindergarten classroom, you would always know when it was shaving cream 

Mary Saghafi: day. Totally. One of my favorite ones is just a game that we used to do in kindergarten and I love doing this when I I'm subbing in the preschool, especially we will have the students turn and sit in a circle so that everybody can touch the person in front of and you're going to write the letter on the back.

So I will say Here's your letter. Everybody do it at the same time. And you trace that letter on the person's back so they can feel it. And they're visualizing what the letter is. Then you give a chance for everybody to do a secret letter. On top of the person's back. So it's a mystery letter. So you say big line down, jump to the top, little curve, kick the leg out, and that's a letter R, right?

So so then they would guess letter R, what letter am I making? And you can either say those words or not, but that's a really fun little like mystery game. It's so important to teach directionality, left and right hand, shaking your left and right hand, this is [00:58:00] your left hand, if you use your pencil with your right hand, your left hand is your helper hand, everybody raise your helper hand, it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's helper hand is going to be left or right, but they need to know it, oh, you write with your left hand, so your helper hand is your right hand Making sure that that directionality is there.

I was thinking 

Shannon Betts: that when you were talking about the uppercase letters starting at the top and you were singing your song, I was thinking that all of this also reinforces concepts of print. Because, you know, we're reading from left to right, we're reading from top to bottom, 

Mary Saghafi: you know. Being able to know, yeah.

The other thing, I know I keep harping on this, but it's just because I had this really long training, but I love the other part about handwriting without tears, because they give you wooden pieces. And so, every letter is formed with a stick a big stick, a little stick, a big curve, or a little curve.

And so, you start off, you're polishing your sticks. You're putting them above your head. They're putting them [00:59:00] below their seat. They're putting them diagonally. You're learning directions. So much directionality. It's so important. And so And it's playful. The other most powerful thing that I really learned and I always take away is this concept called mat man.

And so they show a picture and I'm sure you can Google this, but a picture of a student of at four years of age when they see a Person. How do they depict a person? It's usually like potato shape with legs and maybe like some stick hands. Matt man really breaks it down so that they then talk about what does the head look like?

Where's the neck? Where is the body? Where are the legs? Where are the arms? Where are the hands and the fingers and the details that the students are then able to incorporate into their own self portraits is really incredible. Oh, I've never heard of that. M A T T. Matt? M A T T. Matt just MIT Matt man.

And so I will I'll post another part of it for Instagram because it's so it's such a nice [01:00:00] image. And shows such developmental growth too. Okay. So let's see. 

Shannon Betts: What else do I have? Well, we're going to have a lot of links on our show notes, right? I mean, we've mentioned a lot of things and we've even found some of those foundations letter guides.

And so that's going to be helpful. And any other kind of resources we've been adding to the list. And so those will all go on our show notes on our website. And then also we send out our show notes if you join our email list, which you can join our email list by going to our website. 

Mary Saghafi: Okay. So here's our message.

And leaving just like everything in literacy, you can't build on a shaky foundation. So, we have to make sure that we are filling these gaps. And the earlier the better. And if you know better later on, you still have to fill in the gaps. That's just the way of it. I love talking about all things handwriting.

No, 

Shannon Betts: I appreciate that. You know, our theme of the season is putting it all together. And I [01:01:00] feel like handwriting might be one of those missing pieces, you know, that's not solving the puzzle of why this student may be still struggling, 

Mary Saghafi: you know? I think, yeah, I think once you start to notice kids who are the outliers and get to the root of the problem, you can really see, and I, I often see handwriting as such a big piece.

And essentially the reason is it involves all of your executive functioning skills. 

Shannon Betts: Well, and it benefits every student, whether they necessarily need it or not. It benefits every student because, like you said, we're often judged by our handwriting, but then there are some students who really, really need it.

So we might as well be doing it for everybody. Yeah. 

Mary Saghafi: Okay, good. We'll make sure you follow our Instagram feed. So yes, Instagram and Facebook. 

Shannon Betts: We always post the same stuff. So when we say Instagram, we mean Instagram and Facebook. And you can find our show notes on like the, you know, We'll text under the podcast [01:02:00] episode of your favorite podcast app or on the webpage for each of our episodes.

And then, like we said if you join our email newsletter, we email the show notes so that then you have them all in your reference guide. And members of our Patreon, we have like a directory where it's literally all of our show notes for all of our episodes. And so it's in a PDF, an interactive PDF, and you can just find all the links.

And I use that all the time. Like I still go to like Season 1, Executive Functioning, Oh, what did you mention there? And I go to those links all the time. 

Mary Saghafi: I will say that a lot of our feedback that we get from listeners is how valuable our show notes are. Yeah, they appreciate all the free links. Yeah. Yeah, if you haven't actually gone back you know, check and see some of those show links, because all the way back it goes the Yeah, 

Shannon Betts: we're curating the resources for you, so you don't have to go find all these 

Mary Saghafi: articles and these sources.

Yeah, our goal is always just to make life a little bit easier, and that's one of the ways that we do that. So, and I mean, [01:03:00] mostly Shannon, the guru of setting all of this up for everyone. I just 

Shannon Betts: want to say, like, I don't want anyone listening to this episode thinking, okay, gosh, they're telling me one more thing to do, which is teach handwriting.

I don't want that to be the takeaway from this episode. It's more handwriting is really important to overall reading development, overall writing development, overall to the language processing in the brain. Right. And so how can you put it in? In a way that is working smarter. 

Mary Saghafi: Well, and, and yeah, if it is one of those essentials, and maybe it moves up on the priority list you know, for teachers, or you may get known to your administrators, why it should be a priority or what your, your observations are noticing.

Shannon Betts: Yeah, I could even see, you know, asking for like a, you know a little teacher grant, 

Mary Saghafi: you know, 

Shannon Betts: for workbooks or something [01:04:00] like that. 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And there are actually a lot of really great resources that are available. So, reach out to us or let us know if you have any other resources that we haven't mentioned yet.

We love, we love learning more about other resources. And 

Shannon Betts: this is one especially, not only check out our show notes after the episode, but also, like we said, follow the social media feed after this episode airs because you, you know, handwriting is something that's a visual. And so we need to we're going to have a lot of pictures and videos that show what we were talking about.

So thank you, Mary. I've learned a lot 

Mary Saghafi: about handwriting today. I love chatting. Thanks for joining.