What is it? What are some important concepts to know about teaching writing? How important is handwriting instruction? Teacher tip: Write daily Provide daily time for students to write. Teacher tip: create a community of writers Create an engaged community of writers. Tips for Principals: teach handwriting Ensure that handwriting is taught explicitly in kindergarten and reinforced in first and second grade.
Tips for Principals: Schedule writing Work with your teachers to develop a schedule that includes dedicated time for explicit writing instruction and writing practice that occurs in different content domains across the curriculum.
Read More to learn more Graham, S. American Educator Winter , , Graham, S. Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. Hochman, J. Spring Effective writing instruction. Time for a revolution. Perspectives on Language and Literacy 41 3 , Summer One sentence at a time. The need for explicit instruction in teaching students to write well. American Educator Hotz, R. April 4, Can handwriting make you smarter? The Wall Street Journal. Because of this, a disorder of written expression can include some combination of fine motor problems, language problems, visual-spatial problems, and attention and memory problems.
Some children may have difficulty tracing shapes or writing letters; others may be able to form letters well, but they may be very slow; still other children have good penmanship but cannot organize their thoughts well enough to write a well-formed paragraph or story. A comprehensive evaluation , such as a neuropsychological evaluation, that looks at many aspects of writing and associated skills is used to make a diagnosis of a disorder of written expression. Typically, this includes a measure of intelligence, tests of academic achievement with a particular emphasis on writing skills , tests of visual-motor abilities, and tests that may be needed to rule out comorbid conditions, such as ADHD.
The evaluator will make qualitative assessments, looking at how the child writes letters or sentences. For example, when I evaluated Paul, his mother brought in a folder of classroom writing assignments, completed within the past year. I noticed immediately that he had many spelling and writing errors, alternated between printing and cursive, and used simple sentence structure.
Sometimes his writing was illegible. He took a long time to do any paper-and-pencil tasks and exhibited slow processing speed. Despite having above average intelligence, his use of complex language was quite limited. Interventions for learning disabilities in writing have been developed but are not very well-studied. It can be difficult to study because writing involves so many processes including formulating ideas, organizing the ideas, using correct grammar, spelling the words correctly, and writing legibly.
Many treatment programs focus on just one or two of these issues. In terms of the physical ability to write legibly, occupational therapy OT is frequently recommended.
OTs assist children in learning the mechanics of letter formation. One particular program, Handwriting without Tears , is frequently used by OTs and teachers to teach handwriting to children. Most programs teach writing as a process that includes prewriting activities—like organizing and sequencing ideas—the writing itself, and post-writing activities such as editing. Write multi-paragraph friendly and formal letters L. Teachers should focus more on overall organization and text style.
Combine several simple sentences to produce short written products e. Correct basic errors in the capitalization and end punctuation of composed sentences L. They will be using the sounds of their native language to represent the words in English. Dictate short stories, poems, and messages in a logical sequence W.
Compose a sentence with phonetic spellings for most sounds in high frequency, regular words and invented spellings for other words L.
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