Knowsley Junior School

Handwriting Policy

Handwriting is a skill, which like reading and spelling, affects written communication across the curriculum. Handwriting is a movement skill and one which is best taught directly by demonstration, explanation and practice. Hand movements, when writing, are firmly established in the movement memory. Children need to practise handwriting movements correctly and often. The correct formation of all letters needs to become quite automatic and may require a lot of practice. Handwriting patterns can be taught during handwriting lessons. They are a pleasurable and creative way of teaching handwriting movements and can be reinforced through art or border patterns around pictures or written work. The correct formation of letters must be a priority in Year 3, and particularly before children are encouraged to start joining. Letters should be finished with a small flick to facilitate joining.

Research shows that handwriting may impact domains as diverse as early literacy, memory, and motor skills. (Appendix 2) Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, & Early Intervention, Volume 5, Issue 3-4 (2012) Mikulak A Scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development… In learning to write by hand, even if it is just printing, a child’s brain must: - Locate each stroke relative to other strokes.

- Learn and remember appropriate size, slant of global form, and feature detail characteristic of each letter.

- Develop categorization skills. Cursive writing, compared to printing, is even more beneficial because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical, and the visual recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation. Cursive is also faster and more likely to engage students by providing a better sense of personal style and ownership.

William Klemm, 2013 (Appendix 3)

Aims

At Knowsley Junior School, pupils will:

Experience coherence and continuity in teaching and learning throughout Key Stage 2.

Understand the importance of clear and neat presentation in order to communicate meaning clearly.

Take pride in the presentation of their work and therefore study handwriting with a sense of enjoyment and achievement.

Be supported in developing correct spelling quickly through a multi-sensory approach to handwriting.

Be taught how to write quickly and fluently to aid expression, creativity and imagination across the curriculum and for a range of purposes.

Be encouraged to use their skills with confidence in real life situations.

Achieve a neat, legible style with correctly formed letters in accordance with Knowsley’s agreed font.

Develop flow and speed.

Produce neat, cursive script automatically and in all written work.

Knowledge, Skills and Understanding

Handwriting is part of the national curriculum in England, and statutory requirements are outlined in the English Programmes of Study (DfE 2014).

In Year 3, children will build on skills learnt during Key Stage 1. They will be encouraged to:

Sit correctly at a table, holding a pencil comfortably and correctly.

Write legibly, using upper and lower-case letters appropriately and correct spacing within and between words.

Form and use the four basic handwriting joins.

Handwriting NC 2014 Years 3 and 4 Programme of Study - Handwriting and presentation Statutory Requirements Pupils should be taught to:

Use the diagonal and horizontal strokes that are needed to join letters and understand which letters, when adjacent to one another, are best left unjoined

Increase the legibility, consistency and quality of their handwriting (for example, by ensuring that the downstrokes of letters are parallel and equidistant; that lines of writing are spaced sufficiently so that the ascenders and descenders of letters do not touch).

Notes and Guidance (non-statutory) Pupils should be using joined handwriting throughout their independent writing. Handwriting should continue to be taught, with the aim of increasing the fluency with which pupils are able to write down what they want to say. This, in turn, will support their composition and spelling. Handwriting NC 2014 Years 5 and 6 Programme of Study - Handwriting and presentation Statutory Requirements Pupils should be taught to write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed by:

Choosing which shape of a letter to use when given choices and deciding whether or not to join specific letters.

Choosing the writing implement that is best suited for a task. Notes and Guidance (non-statutory) Pupils should continue to practise handwriting and be encouraged to increase the speed of it, so that problems with forming letters do not get in the way of writing down what they want to say. They should be clear about what standard of handwriting is appropriate for a particular task, for example, quick notes or a final handwritten version. They should also

be taught to use an unjoined style, for example, for labelling a diagram or data, writing an email address, or for algebra and capital letters, for example, for filling in a form.

Teaching and Learning

We teach handwriting as a specific skill rather than as an independent task.

Weekly lessons should begin with a short teaching activity, addressing tricky joins.

At Knowsley, we will set aside 20 minutes per week (1 session or this may be in short bursts, e.g. registration time).

Handwriting sessions should be calm, quiet and focussed.

All children will use a pen in all writing by Christmas in Year 4.

Children should be reminded to join and to focus on handwriting in all books (apart from jotters where they may choose their own style).

Teachers will model dates and learning objectives in cursive script on the whiteboard.

All adults will model neat, joined handwriting in children’s books.

All new words (and the first letter of a word following a capital) start on the line, on the left.

Focus on correct letter formation, size and position on the line. Ascenders and descenders should be straight (if there is a slight lean it should be forwards, but never backwards).

All letters (excluding capitals) must appear to join.

Capital letters never join. Capitals should be the same size as ascenders, including in dates.

Numbers should be the same size as ascenders and capital letters, and must sit on the line.

The 4 joins that have been taught throughout school will not change (see Beat Dyslexia scheme).

Standardized vocabulary will be used throughout school – ascenders, descenders, loop, join, flick.

For agreed letter formation and joins see Appendix 1. Inclusion The vast majority of pupils are able to write legibly and fluently. However, some pupils need more support, and provision will be made for this (e.g. additional booster sessions, IEPs). Teachers of children whose handwriting is limited by problems with fine motor skills should liaise with the SENDCo to develop a programme designed for the individual child. This may involve extra handwriting sessions, practice and access to extra resources. Other areas that could be considered are posture, lighting, angle of table, etc. Outside agencies may be contacted where appropriate. All teachers are aware of the specific needs of left-handed pupils and make appropriate provision:

Paper should be positioned to the left for right-handed pupils and to the right for left-handed pupils, and slanted to suit the individual in either case

Pencils should not be held too close to the point as this can interrupt pupils’ line of vision.

Pupils should be positioned so that they can orientate their paper comfortably on the table.

Left-handed pupils should sit to the left of a right-handed child, so that they are not competing for space.

The Contribution of Handwriting to Other Aspects of the Curriculum

Teachers discuss handwriting and presentation in all subjects and aim to model good handwriting themselves. Teachers are explicit about different types of handwriting for example, personal note-taking or best handwriting for presentation. Teachers give handwriting a high priority in classroom displays. Handwriting and presentation should be a focus throughout the curriculum, with a constant emphasis on pride in work. Teachers aim to make handwriting lessons relevant, by providing a purpose to the work where possible, encouraging the children to view handwriting as part of an overall presentation policy. The use of rubbers is discouraged. Mistakes are indicated by using brackets and a neat x above the error.

ICT

The growth in the use of word processing and desktop publishing has increased pupils’ awareness of the importance of presentation and the variety of handwriting styles/fonts available. Pupils are encouraged to evaluate a range of fonts and to select whatever is appropriate to suit particular purposes.

Signed Chair of Governors ………………………………………………………

Date ……../……../……..

Review ……../………/……..

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, & Early Intervention

Volume 5, Issue 3-4, 2012 (article of interest)

Getting It in Writing

Writing the Old-Fashioned Way May Enhance Learning and Memory

By Anna Mikulak

Stringing together words on a page to communicate something meaningful, insightful, intriguing, or persuasive is an essential skill that serves us throughout our personal and professional lives, no matter our interests or discipline. And yet, this essential and complex ability starts with a more basic skill that may be disappearing in the age of computers and mobile devices: handwriting.

It’s not surprising that some education initiatives and policies, including the Common Core, are shifting away from writing by hand now that many children are exposed to media devices as early as infancy. But, at the same time that school systems are rolling out laptop and tablet programs and cursive is becoming a relic of a bygone era, scientists are finding that handwriting is much more than an outmoded form of communication.

Recent research shows that handwriting may impact domains as diverse as early literacy, memory, and motor skills.

Literacy

With so much curriculum to cover, even at young ages, dedicating instructional time to handwriting may seem inefficient, especially given children’s increasing familiarity with keyboards. But research suggests that learning how to make snake-like Ss, spiky Ks, and bubble-shaped Bs may have an important impact on skills that contribute to overall literacy.

In a 2005 study, Marieke Longcamp of the Université Paul Sabatier in France and her colleagues found, for example, that preliterate preschoolers who practiced writing words by hand performed significantly better on a letter-recognition task than did preschoolers who practiced typing the same words on a keyboard. The researchers concluded that exposure to letters may not be sufficient for letter recognition — rather, we build a strong internal model of letters through the act of actually writing them by hand.

And a 2006 study from Longcamp and colleagues suggests that this process isn’t limited to young language learners: Adults who were exposed to previously unfamiliar characters from the Bengali and Gujarati alphabets were better at recognizing the characters they had practiced writing by hand than those they had practiced typing.

The researchers speculate that the advantages of handwriting may stem from the way information must be integrated across sensory modalities when we write by hand:

“[H]andwriting provides on-line signals from several sources, including vision, motor commands, and kinaesthetic feedback, which are closely linked and simultaneously distributed in time. No such spatio-temporal pattern occurs in typewriting,” Longcamp and colleagues write.

Research investigating a direct causal link between handwriting and general literacy is sparse, but data from neuroimaging studies hint that handwriting could support literacy skills involved in both reading and writing.

In a 2012 study, psychology researchers Karin James of Indiana University and Laura Engelhardt, now at the University of Texas at Austin, asked preliterate 4- and 5-year-olds to practice various motor skills, including tracing, drawing, and typing capital letters and shapes. The children then passively viewed letters and shapes while lying in an fMRI scanner. The results showed that perceiving the letters activated brain regions known to underlie reading and writing — including the inferior frontal gyrus, the fusiform gyrus, and the posterior parietal cortex — but only for those letters that had been practiced by hand.

“This finding,” write James and Engelhardt, “adds to previous research showing that letter perception is facilitated by handwriting experience, and it further suggests that handwriting experience is important for letter processing in the brain.”

The researchers conclude that “printing may be the gateway through which children learn the attributes of letters that are important for successful categorization.”

Memory

But what benefits could handwriting have for those of us who learned our letters long ago, who read and write with considerable fluency? Does the utility of writing by hand diminish as literacy increases?

Maybe not. Research suggests that writing by hand may also have a significant impact on our ability to retain information.

In research published this year in Psychological Science, researchers Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management investigated memory for lecture material in college students who took notes by hand and those who took notes on a laptop. They found that the two groups of note takers performed equally well on questions that involved recalling facts from the lecture. When it came to answering conceptual questions that required them to apply what they had learned in the lecture, however, students who took notes on a laptop performed significantly worse than those who took notes by hand.

The researchers speculated that laptop users’ notes may reflect “mindless transcription” of the lecture, supported by the fact that their notes contained relatively more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture material. Even when the laptop note takers were explicitly instructed to avoid verbatim transcription, they seemed to have difficulty doing so.

Perhaps the most striking result was the fact that longhand note takers still outperformed laptop note takers on a test 1 week later, after both groups were given a chance to review their notes.

Taken together, these results suggest that modality matters, even for the most diligent note takers.

“It may be that longhand note takers engage in more processing than laptop note takers, thus selecting more important information to include in their notes, which enables them to study this content more efficiently,” the researchers write.

Motor Skills

Handwriting may be disappearing from educational and professional settings, but it also seems to be disappearing from personal communication as longhand letters and calligraphed invitations give way to all things “e” — email, e-vites, e-announcements. Anecdotally, the few occasions that do require extended writing by hand inevitably produce a chorus of, “But my hand hurts!” Like any motor skill, handwriting may become more difficult without practice, and research suggests that writing less by hand may even have consequences for our motor repertoire.

A 2011 study led by Sandra Sülzenbrück of the IfADo-Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors in Germany suggested significant differences in motor performance between adults who wrote primarily via computer and those who wrote primarily by hand. Specifically, the computer writers were slower on a line-tracing test, a test designed to gauge precision and speed of continuous arm–hand movements. These results held even after the researchers controlled for potential confounding factors including age, gender, number of errors on the task, and total amount of weekly writing activity.

While the sample size was small, Sülzenbrück and colleagues concluded that computer use may have effects on “fine motor skills and thus more general features of the human behavioral repertoire.”

Ultimately, the results suggest that our cultural shift from writing by hand to writing by computer could have downstream consequences that extend beyond the ability to produce consistent, legible, or neat script, influencing basic motor skills.

References

James, K. H., & Engelhardt, L. (2012). The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 1, 32–42.doi: 10.1016/j.tine.2012.08.001

Longcamp, M., Zerbato-Poudou, M.-T., & Velay, J.-L. (2005). The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children: A comparison between handwriting and typing. Acta Psychologica, 119, 67–79. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2004.10.019

Longcamp, M., Boucard, C., Gilhodes, J. C., Velay, J. L. (2006). Remembering the orientation of newly learned characters depends on the associated writing knowledge: A comparison between handwriting and typing. Human Movement Science, 25, 646–656.

Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168. doi: 10.1177/0956797614524581

Sülzenbrück, S., Hegele, M., Rinkenauer, & Heuer, H. (2011). The death of handwriting: Secondary effects of frequent computer use on basic motor skills. Journal of Motor Behavior, 43(3), 247–251. doi: 10.1080/00222895.2011.571727

APPENDIX 3 Memory Medic How to improve everyday memory By William Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. What Learning Cursive Does for Your Brain Cursive Writing Makes Kids Smarter Published on March 14, 2013 by William R. Klemm, D.V.M, Ph.D. in Memory Medic Ever try to read your physician’s prescriptions? Children increasingly print their writing because they don’t know cursive or theirs is unreadable. I have a middle-school grandson who has trouble reading his own cursive. Grandparents may find that their grandchildren can’t read the notes they send. Our new U.S. Secretary of the Treasury can’t (or won’t) write his own name on the new money being printed. When we adults went to school, one of the first things we learned was how to write the alphabet, in caps and lower case, and then to hand-write words, sentences, paragraphs, and essays. Some of us were lucky enough to have penmanship class where we learned how to make our writing pretty and readable. Today, keyboarding is in, the Common Core Standards no longer require elementary students to learn cursive, and some schools are dropping the teaching of cursive, dismissing it as an “ancient skill.”[1] The primary schools that teach handwriting spend only just over an hour a week, according to Zaner-Bloser Inc., one of the nation's largest handwriting-curriculum publishers. Cursive is not generally taught after the third grade (my penmanship class was in the 7th grade; maybe its just coincidence, but the 7th grade was when I was magically transformed from a poor student into an exceptional student). Yet scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn “functional specialization,”[2] that is capacity for optimal efficiency. In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates both sensation, movement control, and thinking. Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of brain become co-activated during learning of cursive writing of pseudo-letters, as opposed to typing or just visual practice. There is spill-over benefit for thinking skills used in reading and writing. To write legible cursive, fine motor control is needed over the fingers. Students have to pay attention and think about what and how they are doing it. They have to practice. Brain imaging studies show that cursive activates areas of the brain that do not participate in keyboarding. Much of the benefit of hand writing in general comes simply from the self-generated mechanics of drawing letters. During one study at Indiana University to be published this year,[3] researchers conducted brain scans on pre-literate 5-year olds before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced self-generated printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and "adult-like" than in those who had simply looked at letters. The brain’s “reading circuit” of linked regions that are activated during reading was activated during hand writing, but not during typing. This lab has also demonstrated that writing letters in meaningful context, as opposed to just writing them as drawing objects, produced much more robust activation of many areas in both hemispheres.

In learning to write by hand, even if it is just printing, a child’s brain must:

Locate each stroke relative to other strokes.

Learn and remember appropriate size, slant of global form, and feature detail characteristic of each letter.

Develop categorization skills. Cursive writing, compared to printing, is even more beneficial because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical, and the visual recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation. Cursive is also faster and more likely to engage students by providing a better sense of personal style and ownership. Other research highlights the hand's unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas. Virginia Berninger, a professor at the University of Washington, reported her study of children in grades two, four and six that revealed they wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.[4] There is a whole field of research known as “haptics,” which includes the interactions of touch, hand movements, and brain function.[5] Cursive writing helps train the brain to integrate visual, and tactile information, and fine motor dexterity. School systems, driven by ill-informed ideologues and federal mandate, are becoming obsessed with testing knowledge at the expense of training kids to develop better capacity for acquiring knowledge. The benefits to brain development are similar to what you get with learning to play a musical instrument. Not everybody can afford music lessons, but everybody has access to pencil and paper. Not everybody can afford a computer for their kids−maybe such kids are not as deprived as we would think. Take heart. Some schools just celebrated National Handwriting Day on Jan. 23. Cursive is not dead yet. Parents need to insist that cursive be maintained in their local school. [1] Slape, L. “Cursive Giving Way to Other Pursuits as Educators Debate Its Value.” The Daily News, Feb. 4, 2012. http://tdn.com/news/local/cursive-giving-way-to-other-pursuits-as... [2] James, Karin H. an Atwood, Thea P. (2009).The role of sensorimotor learning in the perception of letter-like forms: Tracking the causes of neural specialization for letters. Cognitive Neuropsychology.26 (1), 91-100. [3] James, K.H. and Engelhardt, L. (2013). The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children. Trends in Neuroscience and Education. Article in press. [4] Berninger, V. “Evidence-Based, Developmentally Appropriate Writing Skills K–5: Teaching the Orthographic Loop of Working Memory to Write Letters So Developing Writers Can Spell Words and Express Ideas.” Presented at Handwriting in the 21st Century?: An Educational Summit, Washington, D.C., January 23, 2012.

[5] Mangen, A., and Velay, J. –L. (2010). Digitizing literacy: reflections on the haptics of writing. In Advances in Haptics, edited by M. H. Zadeh. http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-haptics/digitizing-li....