WHY HANDWRITING INSTRUCTION MATTERS Bev Wolf RESEARCH LESSONS

WHY HANDWRITING INSTRUCTION MATTERS Bev Wolf

RESEARCH LESSONS Handwriting underlies all levels of written language —letters, written words constructed from letters, and written sentences constructed from multiple words. • Students with grade-appropriate handwriting skills are more likely to complete written assignments (Mc. Menamin &Martin, 1980). • Handwriting legibility contributes to better spelling skills (Strickling, 1974). • Students whose notetaking is slow because of poor handwriting have difficulty with lecture comprehension (Blalock, 1985).

• Some poor handwriting may be caused by students not having enough training to form letters automatically when rapid writing is needed as a tool to perform assigned writing tasks (Hamstra-Bletz & Blöte, 1990). • For most students, grapho-motor skills (planning and sequencing and fine motor control) used in handwriting can be improved with guided practice once correct models are demonstrated. The part of the brain involved in these graphomotor processes is very near the somatosensory region of the brain that receives sensory input from sequential movement (kinesthetic sense).

• The act of writing letters with a writing tool not only draws on motor output but also kinesthetic sensory input. Thus a multi-modal approach to handwriting instruction integrates visual input from letter form, oral motor output from naming letters and producing their corresponding sounds and the associated auditory input from hearing those names and sounds, and kinesthetic input from writing the letters. Moreover, these multimodal approaches need to be taught for the goals of producing written language to express meaning via words, sentences, and text. • Teachers often judge students’ abilities and grade them based on the appearance of their written work.

The first research lesson • teaching manuscript handwriting helps children learn to read. Teaching manuscript handwriting led to improved word reading, even though only handwriting was taught, in a randomized, controlled study of low achieving handwriters in first grade (Berninger et al 1997). • Even in a digital world most of our reading material on paper and electronic format is in manuscript format. Learning to produce letters in a format that children encounter when they read will help them read words in that format which they identify more readily because they have learned to form and name (identify) the component letters.

The second research lesson Producing letter forms stroke by stroke makes it easier for the brain to perceive the letters in written words during word reading (James, Jao, & Berninger, 2015, Longcamp, Richards, Velay, & Berninger, 2017). A general principle in cognitive science is that production enhances perception. When first learning to identify letters handwriting (forming them stroke by stroke) results in greater transfer to improved word reading than does keyboarding (selecting formed letter on a keyboard). Although these findings do not mean that keyboarding is never appropriate, they do call attention to the contribution of handwriting early in the process of learning to read and write, even in individuals experienced in using thumbs and fingers for pressing to operate phones or laptops

The third research lesson Students in first and second grades learning handwriting embedded in structured, multi-leveled , multi-modal language instruction involving multiple sensory and motor systems and grounded in Slingerland methods were studied (Wolf et al. , 2016). First grade students taught manuscript handwriting embedded in structured, multi-modal language system were compared to a business as usual control group. In second grade students who received a second year of manuscript instruction were compared to second grade students who received an initial year of cursive handwriting instruction; in both cases the handwriting instruction was embedded in structured, multi-modal language system.

Multimodal better results. Results showed the benefit of teaching manuscript in both first grade (to learn to write correctly formed letters that are legible to others) and second grade (an additional year of review and practice helps them learn to write the letters automatically). Introducing cursive instruction without this additional year of manuscript instruction to develop automatic as well as legible handwriting was not as effective. Automaticity allows developing writers to use their limited working memory resources for generating ideas, choosing words, spelling words, and creating sentences rather than devoting their attention to how to form the letters (Berninger, 1999).

The fourth research lesson • • Many teachers, who are currently under intense pressure to ensure their students meet standards on annual tests required by the district and state, do not feel they have the time to devote to handwriting instruction. Yet, research has shown that in the first grade 15 minute handwriting lessons, about 15 minutes in duration) with an additional 5 minutes to compose are effective in learning to form letters and apply letter formation to their own writing for communication with others (Berninger et al. , 1997). A short daily handwriting warm up, just as athletes warm-up with exercises before a game, followed by spelling and composing instructional activities, was effective in developing automatic handwriting in later grades as well (Berninger et al. , 2008). children have learned to form letters it is not necessary to drill children in writing the same letters over and over again within a lesson for long stretches of valuable instructional time. Each letter of the alphabet can be practiced in each warm-up but not the same order every time. in a different order in each lesson, using the following strategy. First study numbered arrow cues for order of component strokes in forming each letter, hold letter form in memory, and write letter from memory (Berninger, 2009). Then move onto spelling and composing activities which handwriting enables. Also see Wolf et al. (2016) for additional ways to guide the handwriting practice and then apply handwriting to other writing activities.

The fifth research lesson Students benefit from cursive handwriting instrucction in grades 3 and 4. The connecting strokes between letters help link letters into word spelling units and also to increase speed of writing words. For those introduced to cursive in third grade and reviewed in fourth grade, cursive alphabet writing skill (ability to find, access, and produce cursive letters legibly and automatically in alphabetic order) contributed to better spelling and composing in grades 4 to 7 than did either manuscript or keyboarding on the same alphabet writing task (finding, accessing, and producing legible, automatic, ordered letters) (Alstad, et al 2015). Cursive handwriting was invented to speed up handwriting before we had typewriters or computers.

The sixth research lesson • is that beginning in the third-fourth grade transition developing writers benefit from brief games in which they find and write the letter that comes before or after other letters in the alphabet (Berninger, Abbott, Whitaker, Sylvester, & Nolen, 1995). Developing writers need to learn to find ordered letters in memory both when they read passages silently (Niedo, Lee, Breznitz, & Berninger, 2014) and when they compose (Berninger et al. , 1995).

The seventh research lesson is that periodic tune-ups in manuscript and/or cursive in which students practice writing the alphabet from memory benefits students in grades 4 and above (e. g. , Berninger et al. , 2008). Without periodic practice, handwriting, like many other skills, becomes less legible and/or more effortful for many students. Once students learn both manuscript and cursive they can choose which form of handwriting they prefer— and in fact most students use a mix of formats (Graham, Berninger, & Weintraub, 1998), but they benefit from brief reviews from time to time of both formats, which they need not only to use in their own writing but also to be able to recognize letters in the writing of others. • School success depends on completing many tasks, which require integrated readingwriting, for example, taking handwritten notes and then using them to generate handwritten summaries or reports at school (Altemeier, Jones, Abbott, & Berninger, 2006) Although laptops may be used for homework assignments, they are not always available in the classroom. Most importantly, currently many technology tools now use handwriting—letter formation by index finger, stylus, or electric pen directly on screen or pad rather than a keyboard—as will be discussed later in this chapter in the section on technology