Flanagan, Leslie <lflanagan@hinghamschools.

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Shanahan on Literacy
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Shanahan on Literacy <noreply@blogger.com> Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 2:34 AM
To: lflanagan@hinghamschools.org
Shanahan on Literacy
Handwriting in the Time of Common Core
Posted: 21 Sep 2014 02:35 PM PDT
My father, who had no more than an eighth grade education, wrote in a beautiful Palmer
hand. His one-room schoolhouse education did not promise to take him far, but it did allow him
to place words on paper in an elegant and readable manner. And, this skill had practical utility
beyond its aesthetic beauty, since he worked for many years as a bookkeeper.
But the public value of handwriting has diminished during the ensuing century. In fact, the
Common Core State Standards (CCSS) dont even mention handwriting, cursive, or manuscript
printing.
Nevertheless, It is evident that the standards writers expect kids to learn some form of
thesesince the standards explicitly call for students to engage in written composition; and this
would be hard to do if one had no way of getting words on paper.
Of course, part of the diminishment of handwriting is due to the fact that most of us type or
keyboard rather than write. But CCSS doesnt even mention keyboarding prior to third grade.
This neglect of handwriting has occasioned some controversy. Some states, Alabama, for
instance, have supplemented CCSS to require the teaching of these skills in addition to the
shared standards.
Recently, I received a request from a teacher concerning the role of handwriting for
beginning readers.
Many years ago, my response to her would have been that handwriting plays very little
role in literacy development. Correlations between handwriting proficiency and early reading
were never especially high and researchers made a point of the importance of composition and
spelling over handwriting.
That view began to change with the work of Ginger Berninger. She has been one of the
leading researchers exploring how writing affects reading. Like the rest of us who have tilled
those fields, Dr. Berninger has reported a close relationship between reading and writing.
However, unlike the rest of us, she considered handwriting and found that it played an important
role in this relationship.
Many years ago, I concluded that writing could only have an impact on a childs reading
development if the child was writingsomething that is omitted in far too many classrooms.
Berninger takes that a step further, because she has found that the amount and quality of
childrens writing is highly dependent on their handwriting skills.
If a student has trouble getting words on paper, then the impact of writing on reading is
reduced. Students simply write less and write less well (in terms of the quality of the
composition) if they cant easily get words on paper.
Most children are able to write by hand more quickly and fluently than they can by
keyboard. CCSS is correct to encourage the teaching of keyboarding, but handwriting can play
an important role in childrens writing across the elementary years.
There are now various theories about how handwriting may affect the brainand there are
reasons to believe that at least some disabled readers and writers benefit more from some kind
of composition by hand than by keyboard (New York Times article). However, the argument for
teaching handwriting is much simpler than those findings suggest:
Premise 1: Writing has a positive impact on the development of childrens reading skills;
Premise 2: To derive this benefit, children have to engage in writing;
Premise 3: If they can write well (quickly, legibly), they will write more and better;
Premise 4: If children write more and better that will have a more positive impact on reading.
Conclusion: Therefore, we need to teach young children to print and write--early on.
Kids may not need to develop a Palmer hand like my fathers, but they do need to know
how to record their ideas on paper with ease and instruction can facilitate that.
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