Brain-Friendly Kindergarten Handwriting Practice and Research: Why it Matters Rough Draft 10-08 N.E. Kindergartners love to write! Daily “kid writing” teaches reading. So, it is important to be intentional and have high expectations for efficient handwriting practices right from the start. (This does not mean having children mindlessly copy pages of letters.) We continue our dialog and action-research with kindergarten colleagues about successful strategies to develop handwriting fluency—always taking advantage of how the young child’s brain learns best. The following is a brief summary of our findings. Teachers who focus on handwriting fluency with a joyful, multisensory approach (art, dance, movement, sign language, imagery and drama) are having excellent results. By using letters, real words and short multisensory “ABC Brain Exercises,” we are seeing amazing writing fluency by the end of the year. See Articles: ABC Fluency Research and Practice: Kindergartners can Learn to Recall and Print 40 Letters per Minute and Provide ABC Fluency Practice for Less-Experienced Students. For one of the articles about the original University of Washington research behind our fluency study see: http://ldadvocates.com/written-language-disabilities.htm Incorrect muscle memories are hard to unlearn later. Encourage efficient letter formation from the first day of school, beginning with the most important thing a child will write—their name. Engage parents for nightly review in name writing until fluency is achieved (fluency = speed and accuracy). Our high expectations and authentic handwriting practice is driven by careful assessment: both student self-assessment, and ongoing teacher observation with systematic record keeping. See: Suzie Haas Name Ticket Strategy Brain-Friendly Kindergarten Handwriting teaches the basic handwriting movements actively and playfully. Children sing and dance, they use “sky writing”, buddy writing, art explorations and other playful sensory experiences to internalize key directional movement patterns. They “play with handwriting”, explore the art of handwriting and take pride in making their letters better and better... See Articles: Start With I The alphabet system that children use to learn to write and read needs to be visually consistent. If you are using italic (D’Nealian) manuscript for handwriting, you are actually expecting young children to learn two different visual alphabet systems: one for reading and one for writing. This makes learning much harder. Which handwriting system is best for kindergarten? A summary of independent research from the Eric Clearing House concludes “The vertical alphabet which according to research, is more developmentally appropriate, easier to read, and easier to write for young children.” Consider sharing the following article with district curriculum leaders: Research from the Eric Clearinghouse http://www.areasonfor.com/HomeSchool/Products/Handwriting/ERICstudy.pdf Since “practice makes permanent,” our goal for kindergarten is to use instructional techniques and systematic assessment that ensure our children are practicing efficient handwriting strokes and owning the improvement process. This supports their developing “Kid Writing” and transition to independent writing by the end of the year. The important topic of handwriting is explored in our Joyful Accelerated Kindergarten Literacy seminars. We anticipate having another helpful e-Book available by August of 2009: Brain-Friendly Kindergarten Handwriting! |
