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Mom creates handwriting system

Despite the use of computers, penmanship remains an essential skill

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Dan Gross⁄The Gazette Children at Geneva Day School in Potomac build a ‘‘Mat Man” using wooden pieces that familiarize them with shapes used to make letters. The game is part of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. Click here to enlarge this photo Dan Gross⁄The Gazette Four-year-old Gabe Vorkcik works on making the number eight with Roll-a-dough, part of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum at Geneva Day School in Potomac.

‘‘What he saw all around him was kids who were doing a lot more than that and the teachers were expecting more than that,” said Cheryl Dodwell, Harry’s mother.

Nearly 30 years ago, Jan Olsen had a similar experience with her son.

‘‘He came home crying and said he had the worst writing in the school,” Olsen said. ‘‘I called the teacher and she said he did.”

After her son came home with bad handwriting and tears, Olsen started Handwriting Without Tears, a program that uses simple materials to teach children good handwriting.

‘‘We want a program that’s simple enough for every child to learn,” OIsen said.

Handwriting Without Tears has now trained more than 2 million people how to write and is used in public schools in 14 states, according to the Cabin John company.

Several private schools in Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Potomac also use the curriculum, which focuses on breaking down letters into simple shapes and practicing them through fun activities.

While computers have to a large extent taken the place of pen and paper in both school and professional work, handwriting is still an essential skill, Olsen said.

‘‘Many Montgomery County families are quite privileged. They have computers and printers and they have private tutors,” she said. ‘‘We also have homeless children and poor children and large families. And for us to think that every child has access to a computer and a printer at home is not thoughtful to the reality of many of our families.”

Tips for parents Do it correctly yourself — Children learn by imitating you. Sit up straight — Make sure children sit with feet on the floor and their arms can move freely. Read — Show children the importance of communicating through words. Sing — Sing songs that use their fingers, like the ‘‘Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Draw — Children who draw often, write better. Move — Teach spatial words, like ‘‘under, over, top, middle, and bottom” by using visual representations. Go ‘‘Top Left” —Get children in the habit of going from top to bottom and left to right. Give them little bites — Encourage children to pick up small objects with fingers. Play — Encourage preschoolers to use finger paints and sponges to strengthen writing muscles and reinforce coordination. Source: Handwriting Without Tears

In elementary school, most schoolwork is still turned in written, not typed. And even after elementary school, handwriting is still important for note taking, tests and essays.

Janice Faden, director of Elementary Instruction and Achievement for Montgomery County Public Schools, agreed.

‘‘It needs to be taught so it doesn’t become a barrier to communication,” she said.

MCPS does not officially use the HWT curriculum, but it does have a standard curriculum and instructional guidelines for handwriting in kindergarten through fifth grade, Faden said.

With poor handwriting students’ grades and test scores can suffer, Olsen said.

‘‘If a child writes poorly, they try to find a way to avoid writing,” she said. ‘‘They use the shortest words, the shortest sentences.”

Often, it takes them longer to write, so they may run out of time on tests, such as the new written essay section included in the SAT last year.

Dodwell said she saw a boost in her son’s attitude toward schoolwork since his handwriting improved with help from the handwriting company.

‘‘I have seen for Harry that he was barely writing at all,” she said. ‘‘He had no confidence. All that has changed.”

After Harry worked with a parent volunteer who came to the class to teach the HWT curriculum to students who needed extra help, he felt better about himself, his mother said.

‘‘It taught him not only the ability to form the letters well, but also a sense that he’s capable,” she said.

Dodwell, who also volunteers to teach handwriting in her son’s class, said she likes the curriculum because it allows kids to experience letters in different ways, including physical exercises, songs and stories.

‘‘Their bodies are involved and their sense of fun is involved,” she said.

Trained as an occupational therapist, Olsen knew how to break down activities to their basic elements and about children’s fine motor skills. She applied that knowledge to developing a method for teaching handwriting.

She said that the most widely used materials to teach handwriting are poorly designed and don’t facilitate learning easily. In addition, most teachers have never been trained to teach handwriting she said.

‘‘Most handwriting problems stem from a lack of good instruction in habits for making the letters or poor materials,” she said.

Handwriting Without Tears offers teacher workshops to train them in methods and techniques.

The curriculum, which costs approximately $5 per student, according to the HWT Web site, begins with teaching kids to build letters out of pieces of wood.

‘‘They get the shapes,” Olsen said. ‘‘We can teach them to build their letters before we teach them to write them, so when they are ready to write them, they know how they are formed.”

Crystal Weikle, who teaches 4-year-olds at Geneva Day School in Potomac, said the program is ‘‘fabulous.”

‘‘The children have really gotten into the songs and the activities,” she said.

In the past, Weikle said, teachers have relied on activities that used crayons or markers and paper.

With the new curriculum, activities use other items, such as wood pieces.

‘‘This program makes everything a little more exciting,” Weikle said, ‘‘So a child who might not normally get excited about crayons and paper, might get excited about another aspect.”

She said since she started teaching the curriculum, she has seen her students’ drawing mature more quickly.

‘‘We want them to move from the scribble phase to make more recognizable shapes, like a circle, a cross,” Weikle said.

With the HWT curriculum, after students master printing uppercase letters, they learn lowercase. In third grade, they learn a simple form of cursive writing that eliminates the curlicues and slantiness of traditional cursive.

The curriculum continues to fifth grade encouraging students to use cursive handwriting while learning grammar and writing tips.

‘‘We have had adults and high school and middle school students use the fifth-grade book,” Olsen said.