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Writing1:The ArtofWriting

LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to: Plan and carry out handwriting classes for children; Plan and carry out sentence writing lessons; and Build an appreciation that writing can be a difficult skill to learn by children.

INTRODUCTION

This topic introduces us to the basics of writing and the teaching of writing. Undoubtedly, writing is an essential communication skill as are reading, listening and speaking but writing is one that has permanence and thus it continues to relay the meaning encoded into it long after the author has moved on. The term writing however is a generic one. In Malaysian schools, writing is used to refer to everything from penmanship to academic and creative writing. To some extent this is true because before your pupils can write their thoughts onto paper, they need to know how to extract it from paper. This module works on the basics of writing and how to teach it to your pupils.

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MECHANICS OF WRITING 1: THE ART OF WRITING

ACTIVITY 1.1
How is your own penmanship? Try this out. Write a short a sentence but make sure that: (1) (2) Each alphabet is separate. Write it once with all print capitals and once again in cursive.

We write everyday and it comes naturally that we often forget that it is not an easy skill to learn. This activity is to help you remember what it was like to learn how to write.

1.1

PENMANSHIP

When a child learns to write, he or she usually begins with correct letter formation, and then moving on to writing uniform sized letters. Next he or she can learn to produce a uniform slant in her / his writing. So when you teach them to write, focus on one objective at a time-first, correct formation, then size, then slant. Have them work on several, but not all, letters, forming letters and then words. Once assigned letters are formed correctly, emphasize uniform sizelower case letters consistently half the size of upper case letters, but continue to require correct formation. Then add uniform slant, again, while continuing to require children to maintain the correct form and size already accomplished. Follow this procedure as you add new letters, words, and sentences. Single letters, require the same even spacing as you do between whole words. It helps young children to use a Popsicle stick or some other tool that can be placed on the paper for uniform spacing. (I suggest using one or two fingers). Check slant by drawing a straight line through the centre of each letter-top to bottom (not left to right). All those lines should be parallel if slant is uniform. Printing may not require this check if letters are formed correctly. Cursive writing, however, often appears sloppy simply because all letters do not slant uniformly. The lines you draw through the letter should look like this: / / / / or slant a bit more to the right, but not be a mix: / l / \. Oversee their practice so they do not fill a page with improper work simply to finish quickly. Praise letters and words written well and have the student erase and rewrite anything unacceptable. While this may seem time consuming, remember that it will actually take more time to undo bad habits. Young children should use large writing or painting tools for better control. Letter size is not important at first, instead, emphasize form, letting them draw

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on blank paper with easy-to-hold "fat" markers, crayons, or paintbrushes which allow less pressure to be used in drawing a solid looking line. Be sure the children use the same grip required later for paper and pencil work. For those children that insist on using adult pens and pencils, add a finger grip (available at many educational supply and office supply stores). Or less, simply wrapping a few rubber bands near the tip of the pen or pencil may also help. Begin with lines and shapes, encouraging children to draw all vertical lines from the top to the bottom. All circular shapes should begin at the 2 o'clock position, moving up, left, and around-like the letter c. (Kids tend to start at the top and make egg shapes.) Shapes using straight lines-triangles, rectangles, and squares, should always use individual lines that meet, not a single stroke with an attempt to make "pointy" corners. Every line should be drawn left to right or top to bottom. Vertical lines are drawn first, left side, then right side, and then the connecting horizontal lines. The horizontal lines on top are first, and all horizontal lines should begin at the left. The children may have their own short cuts, so these basics do need to be taught. Next, teach a few lower-case letters and short words. Many children want to learn to write their own name before anything else. That is fine as long as you are careful to show them the correct form for drawing each letter, only use a capital letter at the beginning, and then give him samples to trace. Once letter formation is acceptable, children should practice on paper with wide guiding lines in order to learn to control size as well as to develop uniformity in size. There should be solid lines at the top and bottom, a dotted line in the middle, and space before the next guiding lines. You can exercise books with this kind of lines in them at good bookstores. Whether printing or writing in cursive, begin with paper that has a dotted middle line rather than using traditional notebook paper. The center line serves as an important guide and aids in faster achievement of uniformity of size. Handwriting paper is available with lines in a variety of widths. Have the student write something on blank paper so that you can see the size he is most comfortable writing, then use that as your guide, rather than age, to select the most appropriate paper for practice. Write the letter or word on the paper a few times for the pupils to trace and then copy. For best results, handwriting practice should be scheduled every day. It is better to take several days off after practicing consistently for a week or so, then to practice erratically. It is also more effective to have two short practices a day then one long practice if the child becomes quickly fatigued when writing. To

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overcome this, you could have a decent writing practice session in class and give your pupils some homework for them to do after school. Fine motor skills develop more slowly, especially in boys, then gross motor skills. Often children, especially boys, may fuss about paper and pencil work simply because their hands get tired. Be sure to have pupils sitting in a proper writing position. The flat surface on which their arms can rest comfortably should not be too high or too low, and their feet should be supported on the floor or on a box, rather than dangling. Improper table height, a slouching or straining body position or dangling feet all sap strength, increasing fatigue. Handwriting practice consists of copying, not creating, letters, words and sentences. Separate composition from handwriting by allowing children to dictate or type compositions, turn in work with handwriting that is less than perfect, or copy final drafts during regularly scheduled handwriting practice instead of the usual handwriting lesson. Remember that composition requires pupils to focus on content and organization, and, during the editing process, on spelling and punctuation skills. If handwriting perfection is also required, pupils who are fatigued by handwriting or those who have difficulty with neatness are likely to look for ways to avoid composition assignments. At the very least they will compose extremely short works simply to avoid as much handwriting as possible. It is also acceptable to allow pupils to answer workbook questions orally, avoiding handwriting to fill in blanks. During handwriting practice focus on adjusting size or any other difficulties that make attempts to fill in blanks sloppy, illegible, or tediously slow. Increase the total daily time spent on handwriting as an isolated lesson as necessary rather than pressuring the student with handwriting expectations he is not yet able to meet while he is working in other subjects. As maturity and motor skills allow, you may require readable written answers that fit the allotted space. Once you know that the student is capable of neat work done at a reasonable speed, all final written work (not rough drafts) can be required to meet the standard you have set. Be careful not to set unrealistic standards. Ultimately, pupils should be able to take phone messages, write letters, and complete applications with writing that is legible, neat, and fits into the space allotted. Teach older pupils who have great difficulty with cursive writing to sign their names with a mature looking cursive form, and then focus on printing letters that are neat and small enough for filling out forms. Handwriting does not have to be a battleground. By targeting specific and narrow objectives, praising efforts that are well-done as well as pointing out

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errors to be corrected, and scheduling regular, supervised practice, progress can be made much more rapidly than if children are left on their own to complete handwriting workbooks. Young children want to write well, but are often frustrated by their own lack of coordination and discouraged because it requires so much more effort to please either the teacher or themselves than they thought it would. Older pupils often rush to complete assignments and argue that neatness is irrelevant. In either case, the teacher must be patient, choose reasonable objectives, and stand firm. Legible handwriting is a worthy cause! Good handwriting skills may take years to develop. Some may argue that hand writing is no longer necessary with the advent and ubiquitous use of computers. This may be true for much work but hand writing will never be eradicated and it will always have a place and use in everyday modern life. If a child prefers to write with their left hand, that is not a problem, it simply means he or she is lefthanded. Teaching Handwriting Checklist 1. What to watch? (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) 2. 3. 4. Lower case all letters of the same length upper case all letters of the same length even spacing between letters and between words. The letters all slant in the same direction. The letters are sitting on the same line.

Don't rush them. Be gentle. Don't criticise. If they make mistake, gently show then the right way of doing the thing they got wrong. Criticism will dampen their spirits and may even be detrimental to their learning and mastery of penmanship. Children tend have shorter attention span, about 15 minutes at the most. Take breaks or to break the class Once your pupils have mastered the alphabets, you can move to simple words. The best words to start with are their own names. This will give the pupils a trememdous sense of achievement to be able to write their own names. You can move on to writing the name of their loved ones: parents, brothers and friends.

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Handwriting Activities in Class

What activities you can use to teach penmanship in class; x x x x imaginary writing: air, water. Writing on rewritable surfaces: white / black board, sand box large surfaces: mahjong paper, blank A4. Pewriting sheets. (see below)

You can also help by helping them to improve their motor skills. Activities that can help; x x x x ; playing with lego or other kinds of bulding blocks ; manipulate things like strings, shoe laces, ties, plasticine / play dough ; Drawing finger painting etc. ; 3d puzzles.

ACTIVITY 1.2
(a) (b) Make a list of safe items/toys that you can use to improve pupils motor skills for writing. Plan a lesson based on your item.

1.1.1

Writing Sheets

The first step is always the hardest bit the first step is also the most important step in mastering any skill. Imagine you are a school pupil staring at an empty page for the first time. For a child those empty lines on an otherwise blank page will seem intimidating. Your teacher may write things for your to copy on the board but for a child that age copying something from the board poses a challenge in itself. Years ago, when i was in primary school, we had special handwriting exercise books with two sets of lines: a set of parallel dotted lines between the parallel solid lines that we used to pracitce our handwriting. Today however, the teachers life is made easier because you can get websites that give you prepared handwriting worksheets (refer Figure 1.1). Some, like the one i use here, even

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allow you to key in the phrases and words that you want so that you can personalise the exercise sheet. You can start off by building the childs confidence by teaching the pupil to write his or her own name. This usually gives the pupil a great sense of achievement: seeing his or her own name in his or her own handwriting. You may even want to make several copies of the worksheet for the pupil to practice on.

Figure 1.1: Pupils name in upper and lower case. Source: http://www.handwritingworksheets.com

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Having written their own name and a few important names of people who are important to the pupils, you can move on to simple words. Make sure that you have both upper and lower case alphabets in the writing sheets to reinforce the pupils mastery of the alphabets.

Figure 1.2: Simple words in upper and lower case. Source: http://www.handwritingworksheets.com

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After your pupils have mastered single print letters, you can begin to work on cursive writing with your pupils. You can, if you want, start with their own names again but not necessarily. Here the pupils need not connect the alphabets from the beginning. The idea here is to get them used to the way the alphabets are written in the cursive writing.

Figure 1.3: Pupils name in upper and lower case: slanted. Source: http://www.handwritingworksheets.com

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After they learn to write the pre-cursive alphabets, you can now move on to actual cursive writing. Here the pupil learns to connect the alphabets to produce cursive writing.

Figure 1.4: Pupils name in upper and lower case: solid lines. Source: http://www.handwritingworksheets.com

Another way of guding childrens writing is to have dots in specific places on the worksheet. This is to give the pupils reference points for their writing. This helps the pupil to space their alphabets properly and also to help them manage the space on the lines.

Figure 1.5: Simple words in upper and lower case: guided by dots Source: http://www.handwritingworksheets.com

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Figure 1.6: Writing on alphabet Source: http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/ (Accessed 1/8/08)

Finally, penmanship or the art of writing is truly an artform but it has also become an integral part of our everyday lives. It was the ability to record our thoughts and memories onto a media that brought us out of our caves and to where be are today. We still owe a lot to this ability that we so easily take for granted. Some have argued that in the digital age, there is less need for handwriting. I believe this is wrong. Consider the future of technology. True, we will probably not be rid of the keyboard but we are also reducing the size of our technological gadgets: our smartphones, our PDAs and our handheld computers are so smalll that for many it is becoming impractical to have keyboards on them. So technology has recently been moving back to handwriting recognition softwares for our digital tools. Handwriting is coming back simply because it is very versatile. We can pick up a stick and write on sand or earth, we can bring a pencil or pen around with us and write on paper or anything handy anywhere at anytime. We will of course be writing on our handheld devices also. More importantly, the ability to write is, and has always been, the mark of the educated. It is a sign that someone has been educated. It is an extension of the natural ability that distinguishes the human being from the animal: the ability to language even with a a great degree of displacement: space and time.

ACTIVITY 1.3
(a) (b) Go to http://www.handwritingworksheets.com handwriting worksheets for you to practice on. and prepare

Prepare a few sheets and gauge how long it would take you to write them out. This is to give you an idea of how long you need to give your pupils to do their writing. Learn more on about penmanship on your own. Go to http://www.iampeth.com/lessons.php

(c)

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Penmanship is important for pupils to learn to write better. To be able to write properly, pupils need to develop specific motor skills, you need to help them develop these skills. Learning to write is more effecive if you can make it more meaningful to the pupil. You do not need to develop many things on your own these days because there are resources that you can use online.

Fatigue Formation Handwriting

Lower case Penmanship Upper case