Week 5 - Handwriting Flashcards
What is the development of prewriting & handwriting in young children?
- 10 to 12 months: scribble
- 2 years old: imitates horizontal, vertical and circular marks on paper
- 3 years old: copy horizontal, vertical and circle
- 4 to 5 years: copies a cross, right oblique cross, some letters & numerals, able to write their own name
- 5 to 6 years: copies a triangle, print own name, copies most lowercase & uppercase letters
What are the pre-requisite skills for handwriting?
- Hand muscle development
- Eye-hand coordination
- Ability to hold utensils / writing equipment
- Capacity to form basic strokes smoothly
- Letter recognition & discrimination
- Orientation to printed language
What are the 6 developmental classification of Benbow?
- Upper extremity support
- Wrist and hand development
- Visual control
- Bilateral integration
- Spatial analysis
- Kinesthesia
What is the age that typical developing children are ready for handwriting instruction?
Latter half of kindergarten school year
How does poor visual-cognitive ability affect handwriting?
- Poor attention: difficulty in letter formation, spelling, mechanism of grammar, punctuation and capitalisation, formulating a sequential flow of ideas required for written communication
- Poor visual memory: mixing upper and lower case letters, writing the same letter in different ways, unable to print letter from memory, poor legibility, may need a model to write
How does poor visual discrimination affects handwriting?
- Not being able to recognise errors in their own handwriting
- Unable to recognise letters / words in different prints -> difficulty copying
- Poor recognition of letter / numbers in different position / size
- Poor figure-ground discrimination: difficulty copying due to inability to determine what is to be written
How does poor visual-spatial problems manifest as?
- Reversing letters and words
- Over space or under space between words and letters; inconsistent spacing
- Trouble keeping within margin
- Poor shaping / closure of individual letters
- Lack of uniformity in orientation and size
- Difficulty placing letters on a line and adapting letter size to the space provided on the paper
What is the pencil grip progression in different age?
- 10 to 12 months: primitive grip (hold / write using whole hand, pronating forearm, using shoulder to move pencil)
- 18 to 30 months: transitional pencil grip (pencil being held with flexed fingers, forearm pronated or supinated)
- 6.5 to 7 years: mature pencil grip (stabilized with distal phalanges of the thumb, index, middle and possibly ring finger, wrist slight extended yet dynamic, forearm supinated rest on the table)
What is considered mature pencil grips?
- Dynamic tripod grasp
- Lateral tripod
- Dynamic quadrupod
- Lateral quadrupod
What are some ways to analyse a child’s handwriting?
- Work samples: comparing with other peers
- File review: academic performance, special tests, special services, medical reports
- Direct observation: task performance, attention, behaviour of the child, interaction with teachers and peers
What are the domains of handwriting?
- Legibility: letter formation, alignment, size, spacing, slant
- Writing speed: letters per minutes
- Ergonomic factors: biomechanics of writing posture, upper extremity stability, mobility and pencil grip
What are some ways to improve legibility?
- Teaching letter formation (teach starting points, grouping letters with similar letter forms, writing out loud, repeat with different writing tools)
- Teach alignment & sizing (tall, short, tail letters; sky, tree, ground)
- Teach space concepts: box method, spacing using pinky, spacing errors, slashing
What are some considerations to take when teaching handwriting?
- Level of adult guidance: HOH, verbal guidance, self-check
- To improve learning of letters: multi-sensorial teaching method, consider sensory systems, writing tools
- Other considerations: attention, motivation, self-esteem
What are some activities to improve fine motor control and isolate finger movement?
- Picking up small objects using a tweezer
- Rolling small clay between tips of thumb and index and middle finger
- In-hand manipulation
- Twisting open small objects using thumb, index and middle
What are some activities to promote graphic skills?
- Draw lines & copy shapes using shaving cream, sand or finger paints
- Colouring
- Doing dot-to-dot pictures and mazes
What are some activities that help enhance right-left discrimination?
- Connecting dots on the chalkboard with left-to-right strokes
What are some activities that help improve orientation to printed language?
- Label their drawings based on their description
- Encourage book-making with their favourite topics
- Label common objects in the classroom or at home