Why Handwriting Without Tears®?
Mary Beth is a certified handwriting specialist with Learning Without Tears™. Learning Without Tears™ is an umbrella organization that includes both Handwriting Without Tears®, which teaches penmanship, and Keyboarding Without Tears™, which teaches typing skills. She is passionate about these programs having seen the benefits of multi-sensory instruction firsthand with her own children and students. As the name implies, these programs are designed to reduce frustration with getting ideas out onto paper and to build confidence and success. Read on to learn more about Learning Without Tears™.
Why Handwriting Matters
Research shows that students who have developed sufficient handwriting skills have higher academic performance than students who struggle with handwriting. Poor handwriting can greatly impede the writing process. This is exemplified by students who have ideas about what to write about but struggle with the mechanics of getting their thoughts on paper. This leads to frustration, writing reluctance, and yes, even tears. Further, illegible writing can lead students to make calculation errors in math and to have difficulty expressing what they know in science, social studies, and language arts.
The good news is that handwriting can and should be explicitly taught, and with support, students can make remarkable progress in their penmanship skills. This boosts confidence in all academic areas!
Who Benefits From Handwriting Tutoring
Handwriting tutoring is helpful for students who find themselves frustrated or fatigued by penmanship and for students whose writing is difficult to read.
Often, students are referred to occupational therapy for handwriting remediation. Occupational therapists may place emphasis on the “big picture” and focus on gross motor skills in the gym to build core and hand strength while spending proportionally less time on pencil control. While gross motor skills are foundational, fine motor focus is also important, which is a major component of handwriting tutoring. As such, handwriting tutoring is often a useful compliment to occupational therapy. Additionally, keyboarding tutoring is helpful for older students who are still struggling with handwriting, in order to provide a faster and easier way to communicate.
Program Overview
Handwriting Without Tears® is a research-based program, created by occupational therapists, to provide engaging and developmentally appropriate, multi-sensory handwriting instruction. Handwriting Without Tears® moves through a natural progression, starting with teaching students the strokes that are most basic, then gradually introducing new lines and shapes as children are ready. Capital letters are taught first, as these utilize simpler motions. Next, students move to lowercase letter formation as their skills progress. Letters are taught in logical groups according to similarities in how they are formed. As students mature and develop fluency in their penmanship, they are introduced to cursive and keyboarding for increased writing speed.
Components of Effective Handwriting
Handwriting Without Tears® focuses on the fundamentals of effective handwriting. These include correct posture, developmentally appropriate tools, hand strength, correct grip, pencil control, and finally, proper letter formation. Each of these elements are taught in an engaging developmentally appropriate way using multi-sensory tools.
Correct Posture
Never underestimate the importance of correct posture! Setting kids up for success with handwriting depends on having appropriately sized chairs and desks so that kids’ feet are flat on the floor, arms at a 90 degree angle from the table, and paper tilted at the correct angle. Children also need to have the core strength necessary to sit up straight while they write.
Developmentally Appropriate Tools
Kids need the correct tools to help them write effectively. This includes appropriately sized writing utensils and paper. Generally, shorter crayons and pencils encourage better pencil control and proper grip. Emergent writers often need larger lines to write in. Students decrease their letter size as more control develops. Handwriting Without Tears® promotes use of a double line for correct letter size and formation.
Hand Strength
Hand strength is a key component to handwriting success. Without sufficient hand strength, students may quickly tire of writing. Hand strength can be promoted with a variety of tools such as using tweezers to pick up beads, sewing exercises, and forming letters and shapes with dough.
Correct Grip
Proper grip is a critical component of handwriting success. Proper grip should be taught at age 3 or 4 but can be remediated in older children. First, children are taught to identify the fingers involved in correct grip. Songs, videos, and modeling are used to teach how each finger involved is positioned. Lots of practice is provided in forming correct grip, with exercises such as “flip the pencil” and “pencil pick-up,” until proper grip becomes automatic.
Pencil Control
Tracing is a wonderful tool to increase pencil control. We often put practice sheets inside page protectors so that students can trace mazes, shapes, and letters, over and over using a dry erase marker. Use of sheet protectors and dry erase markers allows for repeated practice and makes it fun!
Letter Formation
It is vital that students are taught the correct way to form letters and receive lots of guidance and practice as they solidify their letter formation skills.
Handwriting Without Tears® provides young children with multi-sensory tools that allow them to learn correct letter formation from an early age. Children begin by building letters with dough and wooden blocks to learn letter shapes. When students are ready to progress to writing letters on their own, tools such as “Wet, Dry, Try” chalkboards are used. In the “Wet, Dry, Try” process, an adult writes a letter on a chalkboard, and the child uses a small wet sponge to trace the letter. They then trace the letter again with a dry sponge, and finally create the letter on their own using chalk, following the outline left by the sponge. This is a fun, tactile way for children to learn and grow their early writing skills!
When students are ready, they progress to practice letter formation in workbooks. Learning Without Tears™ workbooks feature simple and clear examples with targeted practice. Lines are large so that students have sufficient space to write and assignments are appropriate in length so that students get enough practice to solidify their form without becoming fatigued or overwhelmed. As they see their progress, their confidence grows!
Developing Good Habits Early
We all know that many young children have access to digital devices and use them on a regular basis. As such, it makes sense to teach kids keyboarding and digital citizenship skills early so that they use these tools safely and correctly. If students are introduced to typing too late, they may have already ingrained the habit of “hunting and pecking,” which is a difficult pattern to break.
In the Keyboarding Without Tears™program, keyboarding is introduced to children in kindergarten when students learn the correct positioning of the fingers on the home row keys and begin to develop hand strength. Gradually, children move from typing letters, to words, sentences, and finally paragraphs. Typing lessons are infused with enriching grade level appropriate science and social studies content. Digital citizenship lessons are included in the program which emphasize online safety, privacy, and balanced technology consumption so that media is not overused.
Short, Frequent Practice Sessions
Learning Without Tears™ does not replace handwriting with keyboarding! Rather, in the elementary years, keyboarding skills are presented in tandem with handwriting practice. The target practice time for keyboarding skills is 5-10 minutes a day, or 30 minutes a week. Short frequent sessions are preferred over longer intervals. Consistent practice over time produces the best results!
Multi-Sensory Keyboarding Instruction
Keyboarding Without Tears™ makes learning how to type a multi-sensory experience. Students place fingers deliberately on colored coded keys. Each row of the keyboard is a different color to emphasize the vertical movement required in keyboarding. Keys targeted in each exercise are highlighted, along with a colored visual of which finger to place on that key. Auditory feedback is provided to reinforce each correct key placement. Typing errors are cued by highlighting the error in red and providing a gentle knocking sound to encourage the student to try again. Children cannot move on to the next letter until the correct placement is achieved. These multi-sensory strategies boost memory and promote success.
Increased Writing Fluency
When engaging in writing assignments, students should use the modality that is most efficient for them. Starting around third grade, once keyboarding proficiency is achieved, many students, especially those who experience handwriting difficulties, are best served typing writing assignments. This reduces or eliminates the struggle of getting ideas down on paper, due to difficulty with writing mechanics. Students are able to easily read the text they generated and are able to revise their writing by adding and changing content with much greater ease than they would on a hand written text. The benefits of increased writing fluency for these kids is tremendous! For this reason, keyboarding can be included in tutoring sessions and assigned as homework for ongoing practice.
Cursive
You might be surprised to learn that including cursive writing in primary grade penmanship instruction is still considered best practice. In fact, cursive is making a comeback! Cursive writing is being taught in 21 states in the US. It is a powerful remediation tool that gives students who struggle with manuscript writing a second chance at learning correct letter formation. For many kids who struggle with fine motor skills, cursive is their most legible form of penmanship. Finally, having a form of writing that works for them is a tremendous confidence boost!
Did you know that cursive is considered the fastest and most efficient form of penmanship? In fact, studies show that new information is committed to memory faster when it is handwritten, rather than typed, which makes cursive writing a good choice for note taking and research.
Handwriting Without Tears® provides a unique approach to cursive writing that simplifies both letter formation and connections in order to make cursive as accessible as possible for children. Further, Handwriting Without Tears® teaches a style of writing called “vertical cursive,” which is easier to read and write, maximizing student success. As with all styles of handwriting instruction, Handwriting Without Tears® teaches cursive using a combination of multi-sensory tools, explicit instruction, and guided practice to ensure mastery.
