Handwriting and emerging writing skills.

Is there a right or wrong way to learn how to write?

This is a question I often get asked and there are so many ‘for and against’ ways of responding to ‘when and how’ to start (strongly linked to cognitive development). If you are using a synthetic phonics program, the moment you start a child blending and segmenting cvc words, this visual process is already being ‘recorded’ by the brain ( the foundation for later reading and writing skills), as it makes sense of how a sound has a symbol and that symbol has a defined shape.

But, let’s think about that process. The brain is designed or ‘hardwired’ for speech and language. However this is not a process that immediately happened, its one that has evolved and as humans, we have been communicating orally for approximately 100,000 years. However reading (and therefore writing) has been a ‘speck of dust’ in our evolutionary scale, only about 6,000 years.

Briefly, the eye is an amazing muscle and its ability to ‘flip’ an image around so our brain can see a visual cue, assimilate it, give it a name and store it, is an amazing feat and happens in microseconds. I mention this, as this is how in the early stages of language acquisition, children (a skill we also use as adults) use an image and remember is oral ‘name’ for example chair, table, beach, laptop. And as we become skilled with this we can extend this to naming emotions, thoughts etc.

So how is this connected to writing? Young children use strategies such as looking for angles, ovals, circles and lines to make sense of a letter shape. When children see environmental print, the may start to recognise familiar letters from their name, however the letters are mostly random shapes with no meaning. Exposure to letter sounds and letter shapes starts the ‘image to sound’ process that moves on to ‘writing’. Writing at this stage is often with multi-sensory activities (plastic letters, play-dough, air-letters, finger tracking, sandboxes etc) as children ‘play’ with the sounds and their corresponding grapheme. This is an important stage of ‘writing’ as children build up their fine motor skills but equally, the hand to eye coordination. We often forget that the eye is a muscle that

needs to be developed to cope with reading and writing tasks later on.

Mark making is a huge experimental time for young children as they begin to attribute a squiggle or mark to a sound. Random letters are strung together and the child will be able to attribute some meaning to this and even attempt to start writing simple cvc words. Activities like letter tracing, copying and tracing directional lines are often considered a ‘waste of time’ but they have their place in the writing process (however, they should not be over used).

Also, it is a time when children develop their right or left hand dominance and we as educators can see (as children progress) if there are issues with copying, poor letter formation or letter shape and sounds agreement.

There is a debate about using print or cursive letter formation to start children off. If we think about the process that a child’s’ eye goes through to make sense of a letter shape he/she sees in print, the eye is using its knowledge of searching for familiar shapes to make sense of the image. So in the initial stages of emerging writing, it may be logical to keep to simple print, so the formation of the letter shape is seen in a basic way.

Emerging writing not only depends on opportunities to ‘mark make’ and start making letter shapes but also reinforcing the relationship to the letter sound. This is important as later on children will be activity ‘writing’ or translating in their mind, before writing. A good range of materials will also help develop the curiosity and production.

Can children start with cursive? Many countries do, using individual cursive letters that eventually join-up into a cursive word. There is speculation that this enables children to write a ‘whole word’ without taking their pencil off the paper, therefore recalling the sequence of the letters in the word easily. However, care should be taken that the emphasises is not just on perfect production, but equally comprehension (if copying activities are used extensively). Additionally, all children ultimately have the same handwriting. This may be a strategy to avoid poor handwriting skills later on or a way to ‘fast track’ children to write legibly.

Many children start with print and organically start to join up letters. But, it is important to note that it does not help the child if some classes are done in print and others are cursive. This could happen incidentally due to the educational resources but it is good to be clear or have in place a handwriting policy in educational facilities, to know what to use and how to implement it well.

Equally, the use of digital devices has reduced the experimentation children had with pencils and paper, as visual recognition of letter shapes is happening faster with synthetic phonics software or games and finger tracing of letter shapes is encouraged. But, these need to be transposed on top paper, to develop a curiosity with writing and ‘making sense’ of the whole what ‘I hear-what I say-what I read- what I write’, process.

To conclude, giving children time to develop their writing skills is a process. Time constraints in school have made it difficult to have extended classes with multi-sensory activities and often a ‘crushing’ curriculum requires teachers to plan so much into a class.

Additionally, this can also extend to home life as work and busy schedules can make it difficult for parents to provide or participate in ‘hands-on’ activities, but invest in apps to facilitate that area.

Writing is a life skill. If all our digital modes of communication fail, we can still write and communicate. Writing has many symbols and ‘codes’ but ultimately the process is slowing down with ‘fill the gap’ activities and children with emerging audio/visual learning styles. Let’s try and get writing back where it needs to be…on paper!