Abstract
The quality of handwriting curriculum and instructional practices in actual classrooms was investigated in an in-depth case study of four inner city kindergarten classrooms using quantitative and qualitative methods.
The handwriting proficiency of students was also evaluated to assess the impact of the instructional practices observed. The findings suggest that even though teachers employ a number of effective strategies, there is room for improvement in implementing effective, research-approved handwriting instruction.
In particular, daily, explicit instruction, writing for fluency, writing from memory, and use of self-evaluation are areas that need improvement. Results indicate that the lack of emphasis on these practices impacted the quality of teaching and learning of handwriting skills.
Future research is needed on the impact of teacher training, use of an assessment tool that objectively assesses students’ handwriting, use of reading and handwriting curriculum that complement and reinforce one another, and the effectiveness of research-based strategies in practice.
Introduction
Handwriting is an important skill required for school success as students use writing across the curriculum. Often, handwriting is required to demonstrate students’ knowledge and skills through tests, homework, and reports. In spite of the extensive use of computers in our society, children still spend a significant amount of the school day performing fine motor tasks and writing to demonstrate their knowledge (Feder & Majnemer, 2007; Graham & Harris, 2005).
In fact, Cutler and Graham (2008) found that 74% of elementary teachers reported using computers to support student writing less than once per month. While the majority of teachers reported teaching handwriting at least weekly (Cutler & Graham, 2008), there is some concern that explicit handwriting instruction may not be receiving as much classroom time as needed to promote handwriting efficiency and automaticity (Asher, 2006; Graham & Harris, 2005).
Graham and Weintraub (1996) estimated that between 12 and 20% of school-aged children experience handwriting difficulties, and other estimates have been as high as 44% (Alston, 1985; Rubin & Henderson, 1982), although these figures are based on teacher estimates and should be viewed with caution.
Daly, Kelley, and Krauss (2003) also stated that occupational therapy referrals for handwriting have increased. Educational practices that emphasize process writing and whole language (Graham & Weintraub, 1996) or personal communication (Schlagal, 2007) coupled with the heightened focus on reading and mathematics as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Cutler & Graham, 2008) have resulted in a de-emphasis on the direct instruction of mechanical skills in handwriting.
Why is Handwriting Important?
There is a growing body of literature that indicates that handwriting instruction is important not only for learning letter formation, but that it also impacts other aspects of academic performance, especially for young learners. First, movement production seems to be an important component of learning letter recognition. Sheffield (1996) pointed out that handwriting involves kinesthetic learning, which uses one of the earliest and strongest memory systems.
Yamagata (2007) found that children were better able to make representational distinctions when they had engaged in graphic production. Berninger (1999) and Berninger et al. (1998) reported that handwriting may promote letter recognition. Longcamp, Zerbato-Poudou, and Velay (2005) verified the importance of handwriting for letter recognition. They found that children who were trained to copy letters by hand demonstrated better letter recognition than those who were trained to type the letters.
Further, Berninger et al. (2006) proposed that handwriting and typing use separate processing systems and this was confirmed by fMRI data from Longcamp et al. (2008), that indicated activity in different neural pathways for characters learned by writing rather than typing. In addition, handwriting is important because it impacts writing composition abilities. A number of researchers have reported a link between poor handwriting and difficulties in writing composition. Berninger, Abbott, Whitaker, Sylvester, and Nolen (1995) reported that students with learning disabilities who had difficulties in written composition also had deficiencies in handwriting.
Similarly, Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, and Whitaker (1997) found that handwriting fluency moderately correlated with measures of writing achievement and handwriting fluency continued to make a unique contribution beyond the primary grades in accounting for variability in how much and how well students wrote. In addition, students who struggled with the mechanics of handwriting and composition wrote papers that were full of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling errors (Graham et al., 1997), were hard to read (Graham & Harris, 2002) and shorter in length due to handwriting that was often slow and labored (Graham & Weintraub, 1996).
Furthermore, handwriting difficulties can seriously hamper the ability of young children to express ideas in text (Berninger & Swanson, 1994; De La Paz & Graham 1995; Graham, 1990). They also seem to interfere with content generation, especially for young children who were still mastering this skill, and leads some beginning writers to avoid writing and to develop negative attitudes toward writing (Berninger, 1999; Berninger, Mizokawa, & Bragg, 1991; Graham, 1999). McCutchen (1995) proposed that transcription skills such as handwriting place considerable processing demands on beginning writers such that they minimize the use of other writing processes, for example, planning and revising.
These handwriting difficulties may have far-reaching consequences for struggling writers. For example, Berninger et al. (1997) found that children who demonstrate impaired compositional fluency (rate of producing written work) in primary grades may develop written composition problems in the upper grades.
Graham and Harris (2006) found that extra handwriting and spelling instruction for young children who were at-risk for writing difficulties made greater gains in spelling, handwriting legibility and fluency, sentence writing, and vocabulary diversity in their composition when compared with those who received extra phonological training.
Similarly, Graham and Harris (2005) demonstrated that even young struggling writers can be taught through explicit and systematic instruction to use new attention-demanding tools, such as planning strategies, when they write. Handwriting may also impact the development of reading abilities. Learning how to write letters and spell words seems to reinforce the letter naming, phonemic, and word reading skills emphasized in kindergarten (Berninger et al., 1997). Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans, and Jared (2006) found that practice in writing is important for the development of reading and suggested that early print exposure is an important component of learning language code.
Finally, handwriting is important because it also influences the reader. The reader forms impressions about the quality of ideas in a handwritten paper based on the legibility of text, and poor handwriting may make part or all of the text impossible to read (Graham & Harris, 2002). Some research findings (Alston & Taylor, 1987; Briggs, 1970) even suggest that the quality of handwriting affects students’ grades regardless of the content of the writing.
Research-based Handwriting Practices
Employing effective teaching strategies in handwriting instruction in elementary school may be one important way to prevent the development of writing problems (Graham & Harris, 2002).
A growing body of research has identified a number of teaching techniques that are important cornerstones of handwriting instruction (see Table 1). We review eight of the most effective research-based practices below. These instructional practices seem to be effective for a wide variety of children, including those likely to exhibit writing problems and those with special needs (Troia & Graham, 2003).
Frequent/Daily Lessons
Troia and Graham (2003) recommend 75–100 min of handwriting per week. Both Jones and Christensen (1999) and Edwards (2003) recommend that this instruction take place daily.
Since handwriting is a motor skill, distributed, frequent practice (e.g., daily) for short periods of time leads to better learning than infrequent or massed practice (Graham & Miller, 1980; Graham et al., 2008).
Direct and Explicit Instruction
An emphasis on explicit and systematic handwriting instruction has also been found to be very effective for young writers (Edwards, 2003; Graham et al., 2008; Graham & Harris, 2002, 2005; Troia & Graham, 2003). This includes teaching students an efficient pattern for forming individual letters, modeling the formation of each letter, providing practice, encouraging self-evaluation, and giving feedback (e.g., Graham, 1992).
Graham and his colleagues (2008) found that although teachers thought both direct instruction and incidental learning are important for handwriting development, they indicated that direct instruction was more important than incidental learning. In their survey, teachers overwhelmingly reported that handwriting should be taught as a separate subject.
A number of teachers reported that handwriting is typically taught during whole class instruction using commercially available programs, with Zaner Bloser or D’Nealian being the most common (Asher, 2006; Graham et al., 2008). The commercially developed handwriting programs introduce the alphabet in different orders. In addition, some teachers introduce the letters one by one while others do it in groups (Graham et al., 2008).
Research suggest that in order to reduce confusion for young children, teachers should introduce letters in a carefully thought-out order. For example, confusable letters (e.g., b and d) and sounds (e.g., vowels a in sad and e in bed) should be taught separately rather than in an ABC order (Schlagal, 2007; Troia & Graham, 2003).
Modeling
Explicit teacher modeling of letter formation and pencil and paper positioning is an essential instructional technique when teaching handwriting (Berninger et al., 1997; Graham, 1992; Graham & Harris, 2002; Graham et al., 2008; Graham & Miller, 1980; Graham & Weintraub, 1996; Hayes, 1982; Kirk, 1981; Troia & Graham, 2003). Teachers should employ modeling both when letters are introduced and periodically throughout the school year as a reminder to students.
Guided Practice
Effective handwriting instruction provides many opportunities for students to practice writing while the teacher is giving verbal directions (e.g., guided practice). The following teacher-guided practice strategies have been found to be very successful: tracing and copying letters (Graham & Harris, 2002; Graham et al., 2008), use of visual cues such as numbered arrows as a guide to letter formation (Berninger et al., 1997; Graham & Harris, 2002; Graham et al., 2008; Troia & Graham, 2003), focus on fluency and speed through the use of writing from memory or speed drills (Berninger et al., 1997; Edwards, 2003; Graham & Miller, 1980; Graham et al., 2008), and instruction on the writing mechanics of proper grip, posture, and paper position (Graham, 1992).
Use of Feedback
The use of corrective feedback in which teachers encourage students to correct or rewrite poorly formed letters has been found to be an important practice in handwriting instruction (Asher, 2006; Graham, 1992; Graham & Harris, 2002; Graham et al., 2008; Troia & Graham, 2003).
Teachers should also monitor students’ writing while they are in the process of writing so that they can give specific corrections about letter formation, spacing, slant, alignment, and line quality (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Graham & Harris, 2002). Finally, praising students for correct letter formation has also been recommended (Graham & Harris, 2002; Graham et al., 2008).
Independent Practice
Students should be provided with many opportunities to practice writing and review letters (Graham, 1992; Graham & Harris, 2002; Troia & Graham, 2003). Having students set goals for improving specific aspects of their handwriting and identifying/circling the best letter have also been shown to be highly effective teaching strategies (Graham, 1992; Graham & Harris, 2002, 2005; Graham et al., 2008).
Integrated lessons
Handwriting instruction may be integrated with letter identification and naming letters while writing (Berninger et al., 1997; Edwards, 2003; Graham & Harris, 2002, 2005). Research findings (e.g., Graham, 1992) also suggest that teachers should instruct handwriting directly both outside and during the context of children’s actual writing to help them develop legibility and fluency.
Other research findings suggest that writing instruction be integrated and begin with a low-level task and work up to a higher-level task. For example, the handwriting lesson should start with copying from a model and then move to writing from memory and finally incorporate transcription skills (Edwards, 2003; Troia & Graham, 2003).
Writing Materials
Asher (2006) and Graham (1992) recommend that several different types of paper and writing instruments be available for children to use when learning to write at school. Requiring students to use only one kind of pencil or a certain size of paper may be unnecessarily restrictive, since many children already use a variety of writing instruments and materials at home. Graham (1992) suggested using wide-lined papers for young children when they initially practice a newly introduced letter.
Role of Teachers in Handwriting Instruction
Teachers should be familiar with research-based effective teaching practices in order to be able to implement them in the classroom. Instruction on how to teach handwriting should be a part of teacher preparation programs (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Graham et al., 2008). Phelps and Stempel (1989) suggested that many teachers may not focus on handwriting instruction because they have not received sufficient preparation themselves in techniques of handwriting instruction.
Sheffield (1996) also pointed out that teachers may not be aware of the importance of systematic handwriting instruction. Research confirms that many teachers lack adequate preparation in teaching handwriting and do have misconceptions about the development of handwriting skill (Graham et al., 2008). Teachers also play an important role in assessing and evaluating handwriting and reporting handwriting proficiency in report cards.
Some researchers have raised concerns about how teachers evaluate their students’ handwriting. Armitage and Ratzlaff (1985), for example, stated that teachers tend to rate their students’ handwriting subjectively rather than using an objective, reliable measuring instrument.
According to Graham et al. (2008), most of the teachers in their survey graded penmanship using informal observations and checklists. More research is needed to evaluate the validity and reliability of such informal assessment methods (Graham et al., 2008).
When Should Handwriting Instruction Begin?
Handwriting instruction is often one of the curriculum goals of the kindergarten year. Kindergarteners are introduced to manuscript writing and expected to independently write many uppercase and lowercase letters, to write first and last names, to use letters and words for literary or expository writing, and to put sentences in order by the end of the kindergarten year (Edwards, 2003; Massachusetts Department of Education, 2001; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). In addition, research suggests that writing instruction must occur early (Asher, 2006; Graham & Harris, 2002) before bad habits can be formed and reinforced (Sheffield 1996).
Fifty-four percent of the teachers in Asher’s (2006) study reported that handwriting instruction should start in kindergarten. Marr, Winders, and Cermak (2001) suggested that most children are ready for handwriting instruction by the second half of kindergarten. Daly et al., (2003) found that 66% of children in their sample were ready to begin handwriting instruction at the start of the kindergarten school year and 90% of the children were ready at mid-year.
Kinesthetic learning is one of the earliest and most reliable learning modes. Therefore, Sheffield (1996) suggested that handwriting instruction should begin early since it utilizes kinesthetic memory. Graham (1992) also pointed out that it is very difficult to unlearn motor skills. Since handwriting is a motor skill, it is essential that children learn proper letter formation early so they will not have to re learn the skills.
In addition, once students become spontaneous and efficient in their writing, they are free to focus on the higher-level tasks of writing, according to Sheffield (1996). Ensuring that automaticity in handwriting happens early in a child’s education is, therefore, important.
Focus of the Case Study
Although handwriting instruction is typically introduced in kindergarten and curriculum goals and standards require that children start to learn to write in kindergarten, much of the research has been conducted with first- through third grade children or older children with learning disabilities (e.g., Edwards, 2003; Graham, Berninger, & Weintraub, 2001; Graham, Berninger, & Weintraub, 1998; Graham, Berninger, Weintraub, & Shafer, 1998; Graham & Harris, 2006; Graham & Miller, 1980; Ziviani & Elkins, 1984) rather than with kindergarten children.
Given the recommendations that handwriting instruction should begin early, more research is thus needed to evaluate the quality of handwriting curriculum and instruction implemented in kindergarten classrooms. The quality of instruction greatly depends on the training and background of the teachers.
This impacts both the content of the lessons and how the instruction is delivered in the classroom. Teachers with sufficient training in research-based teaching methods are able to deliver quality instruction while teachers without sufficient training may tend to avoid teaching handwriting (Phelps & Stempel, 1989; Sheffield 1996). While there have been a number of studies using teacher surveys designed to investigate which handwriting practices teachers are implementing in the classroom (e.g., Asher, 2006; Cutler & Graham, 2008; Graham et al., 2008), there is also a need for more longitudinal research (Asher, 2006) and research that utilizes classroom observations rather than surveys in order to see how and if evidence-based best handwriting practices are implemented by teachers (Graham et al., 2008).
In addition, there is a need to evaluate the impact that teacher training and handwriting instruction delivery has on students’ performance. To date, most of the research has focused on either recording which handwriting practices teachers are using (e.g., Asher, 2006; Cutler & Graham, 2008; Graham et al., 2008) or evaluating the impact of instructional practices on student handwriting performance (e.g., Berninger et al., 1997; Graham, Harris, & Fink, 2000). The current in-depth case study is designed to begin to address these issues by evaluating the types and quality of handwriting curriculum and instruction in several kindergarten classrooms where handwriting is introduced to students.
Through the use of teacher surveys, interviews, classroom observations, evaluation of reading and handwriting curriculum, and evaluation of students’ writing samples, the current study explored how handwriting is taught in kindergarten classrooms, the level of teacher training in handwriting instruction, and the implementation of research-based instructional practices.
In addition, we evaluated the impact of the content and delivery of the handwriting instruction on students’ handwriting performance, efficiency, and fluency. Furthermore, we compared teachers’ assessment and grading of their students’ handwriting to our formal assessment of the same students in order to examine the objectiveness of teachers’ grading systems.
Method
Participants
Surveys were sent out to 33 urban elementary school principals in central Massachusetts soliciting information about kindergarten handwriting instructional practices at their school and interest in participating in a year-long research project. Seven principals returned the surveys and two schools were selected to participate in the year-long case study.
The schools in this sample were chosen to be able to evaluate handwriting practices in students from a wide variety of backgrounds and ability levels. These urban schools serve a high percentage of children from low income families with diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Teachers
Four kindergarten teachers participated in the study. Each teacher taught one full day kindergarten class. Mean class size for each of the four kindergarten classes was 23 students. All four teachers were female and white. One of the teachers had a Master’s degree and the other three had a Master’s degree plus additional education. The teachers had an average of 14.5 years as a kindergarten teacher (Range 3–35 years) and an average of 29.25 total years as a teacher (Range 18–36 years).
Students
There was a total of 93 students in the four kindergarten classrooms at the participating schools. Permission slips were returned by 80% of the parents of the children in the four classrooms. The final sample consisted of writing samples from 69 children, 35 males and 34 females, collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year.
Only the writing samples collected at the end of the year are being reported here. The mean age of the students at the time of the end of year assessment was 70.7 months, (Range 64–86 months). The sample was ethnically diverse: 1 American Indian, 3 Asian, 24 Hispanic, 8 Black, and 33 White. Thirty four students received free or reduced-price lunch, 19 were English Language Learners, 2 were on an IEP, and 1 had a 504 plan.
Data Records and Procedures
Multiple measures of the handwriting curriculum and teacher instructional practices in teaching handwriting were recorded in four urban kindergarten classrooms at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year.
In addition, writing samples of the kindergarten students were recorded at the end of the year to compare an objective measure of handwriting performance to teachers’ handwriting assessment on student report cards. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed on the data records to provide a comprehensive understanding of how handwriting was taught throughout the year.
Teacher Survey
Self-report measures of teacher handwriting instructional techniques were recorded at the beginning (October), middle (January), and end (April) of the kindergarten school year through surveys. One section of the teacher survey collected demographic information about teaching experience (e.g., education level, number of years as a teacher, and number of years as a kindergarten teacher).
Another section of the survey asked questions about the use of formal or commercial handwriting instruction curriculum, training in the handwriting curriculum, components of the curriculum used, and the amount of time devoted to handwriting instruction per day and week. The final section of the survey asked questions about specific handwriting instructional practices.
Teachers rated the degree to which they agreed with 35 statements about instructional practices using a 5-point Likert-type scale that ranged from 1 (not a priority) to 5 (highest priority). The statements assessed the use of the seven most effective handwriting instructional practices recommended in the literatures outlined in Table 1.
They are use of modeling (2 questions), use of specific practices of copying, tracing, grouping of letters difficult to learn (9 questions), use of corrective feedback (8 questions), emphasis on fluency (4 questions); emphasis on mechanics of writing (6 questions), use of self-evaluation (2 questions), and integrating handwriting instruction with recognition (3 questions).
An additional statement on direct handwriting instruction (1 question) was also included. Mean scores were calculated for each of the seven instructional practices for each phase of data collection.
Teacher Logs and Lesson Plans
Teachers were asked to complete a Handwriting Instruction Log for a 1-week period at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. They were asked to report their daily handwriting lessons for the week and to check off instructional practices (i.e., modeling, guided practice, use of corrective feedback, and independent practice) they used in that lesson.
The percentage of times each practice was used was calculated for each of the four instructional practices. The teachers also provided the researchers with a copy of their lesson plans and copies of worksheets or workbook pages distributed to students.
Teacher Interviews
The researchers interviewed the teachers at the beginning of each phase of data collection. The interviews focused on gathering information about teacher attitudes regarding handwriting instruction and teachers’ explanations of instructional practices used. In addition, the interviews allowed the researchers to discuss progress within the commercial curriculums and teacher attitudes about the curriculum.
Weekly Classroom Schedules
The weekly classroom schedules were collected from all four teachers to understand how class time was utilized.
Handwriting Curriculum and Reading Curriculum
Handwriting instruction in all four classrooms utilized a district-wide commercially available Reading Curriculum (RC) for kindergarten during the daily literacy instruction block and a Handwriting Curriculum (HWC) for kindergarten during a once-per week occupational therapy (OT) instruction block.
The researchers conducted an in-depth analysis of both curriculums by analyzing the teacher manuals, student workbooks, recorded instructional practices recommended, types of materials used, amount of writing required in the workbooks, sequencing of letter introduction and practice, and integration of handwriting instruction with recognition and phonics.
The teacher interviews and lesson plans allowed the researchers to compare the HWC lessons and the RC lessons during each of the 3-week-long phases of data collection.
Classroom Observations
During each of the data-recording weeks, researchers observed one literacy block and one OT block. Researchers recorded the lesson taught and instructional practices employed during the lesson (modeling, guided practice, use of corrective feedback, and independent practice). Researchers were trained to identify these practices using the operational definitions found in Table 2. These observations were used to compare teacher self-reports to actual classroom observations.
Student Writing Samples
Writing samples were collected from kindergarten students to provide an objective assessment of handwriting skill to compare to teacher assessment of handwriting on student report cards. All children were tested individually by two research assistants. A piece of paper was placed on a digitizing tablet (Wacom, Intuos) and children were given a digitizing pen to write.
Children completed an alphabet task and a copy task. For the alphabet task, children were asked to write the lowercase alphabet from memory as quickly and accurately as possible for 1 min. In the copy task, children had to copy ‘‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’’ as quickly and accurately as possible for 1 min. A model of the sentence was provided on a wide double-line paper.
The student writing products were scored for fluency as indexed by handwriting speed, calculated as the number of letters written in 1 min. Legibility was coded by an analysis of the number and severity of letter flaws such as gaps, line extensions, distortions, or retracing using a four point Likert-type scale of 0–3, with 3 being a correctly drawn letter. The coding system was adapted from the Test of Handwriting Skills Revised (Milone, 2007) and is described in more detail in Fitzpatrick, Vander Hart, and Cortesa (2009).
In addition, children completed a letter recognition task. Children were shown a series of flashcards of uppercase and lowercase letters and asked to report what the letter was. Researchers recorded the responses and calculated the percentage correct for uppercase letters and percentage correct for lowercase letters.
Student Report Cards
Student report cards were collected at the end of the school year. Writing skills were graded in several places on the report cards. One skill (i.e., writes own first and last name) under the Composition category and several skills (i.e., uses crayon, paint brush, pencil with control, prints first name correctly from memory, prints last name correctly from memory, forms capital letters correctly, forms lower case letters correctly, and forms numerals 1–10 correctly) under the Motor Skills category were graded.
The 4th quarter grades were recorded for the above writing tasks. The mean of these seven grades was calculated to create a Mean Report Card Handwriting score. In addition, the grade for ‘‘recognizes letters’’ was also recorded to compare to the letter recognition task. Correlations between these two report card scores and the two handwriting fluency and legibility scores were calculated.
Results
Emphasis on Direct Handwriting Instruction
In the survey, teachers reported spending a mean of 19 min per day on handwriting instruction, devoted 3.3 days to handwriting instruction per week, and devoted 48.75 min per week to handwriting instruction (see Table 3) with a slight tendency for the amount of time devoted to handwriting instruction to decrease over the course of the school year.
Teachers reported spending more time per day on handwriting instruction for fewer days at the beginning of the year and less time per day spread over more days at the end of the school year. As seen in Table 3, teachers reported that explicit handwriting instruction is a moderately strong priority during Phases 1 and 2 (Mean = 3.67) but is a lower priority (Mean = 2.75) by Phase 3.
Inspection of the weekly classroom schedule indicated that the only place handwriting instruction was explicitly recorded on the schedule was a 30 min once per week OT handwriting instructional block. Interviews with the teachers indicated that they teach handwriting within the Reading Curriculum (RC) during their daily literacy block.
Classroom observations confirm that part of the literacy block was spent on explicit handwriting instruction and practice but the amount of time was variable. For the first 5 weeks of the school year when teachers were introducing letters, direct handwriting instruction was a daily practice with 81.19% of the RC practice book pages used containing writing with an average of 6.4 letters written per day.
For the remainder of the school year when letters were reviewed, students completed writing activities an average of 3.8 days per week. Forty-four percent of the RC practice book pages contained writing with an average of 9.2 letters written per day.
Handwriting Curriculum
In the survey, all teachers reported that they used a commercially available Handwriting Curriculum (HWC) as the formal handwriting instructional method. Inspection of the weekly classroom schedule, however, indicated that the once per week, 30-min OT block was the only time that the formal HWC and workbook pages were used. In addition, this instructional block was taught by an OT and not the teachers.
Handwriting instruction by the teachers was embedded in the RC, which was taught during the daily literacy block. During the interviews, the teachers explained that they use the HWC language when instructing children how to write the letters during literacy block but the RC is required by the school district. The classroom observations revealed that the teachers did use some HWC language during literacy block when they were teaching letter formation.
For example, observer notes stated that teachers often stressed ‘‘starting at the top’’ and used other HWC terminology (e.g., starting corner, leap frog, and opposite corner).
Practices Recommended in Handwriting Curriculum (HWC)
The HW Curriculum, developed by an occupational therapist, emphasizes a multi-sensory approach to handwriting instruction and use of a developmentally appropriate set of techniques for teaching handwriting. An outline of the curriculum is found in Table 4. The curriculum begins with a series of pre-writing activities and songs to teach children directionality (e.g., top, bottom), writing terminology (e.g., lines, curves, frog jumps, etc.), and strengthen fine motor skills by playing with wood pieces to form letters and writing on slate boards.
Once formal instruction in handwriting begins, children are introduced to all the uppercase letters first (frog jump capitals to starting corner capitals to center starters) and write the letters on gray block paper. The teaching order for the lowercase letters is also designed to promote efficient writing habits and is outlined in Table 4. Lowercase letters are written on wide double-line paper.
The teacher’s guide recommends that when teaching letter formation, teachers should have students trace the letter with their finger first, write the letter in the air, and copy it in the space provided on the workbook. The HWC student workbook pages use arrow and number cues to show letter formation. An analysis of the number of letters written in the student workbook indicates that 8 letters are written per page when the uppercase letters are introduced, 5 letters per page when lowercase letters are introduced, and an average of 21.76 letters on review/practice pages.
There were 5 review pages during the introduction of uppercase letters and 11 review pages during the introduction of lowercase letters. The review pages consist of writing from memory exercises (3 of the 16 pages), writing all the letters introduced in a sequence (2 of the 16 pages), or writing words or sentences (11 of the 16 pages). Once all the letters have been introduced, daily review is recommended for the rest of the school year as outlined in Table 4.
Practices Recommended in Reading Curriculum (RC)
The RC consists of complete day-to-day lesson plans for teachers and complimentary workbook pages designed for kindergarten students. The primary focus of the curriculum is the development of reading skills, and each week has a specific target skill for phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. One component of the curriculum is the instruction of handwriting and in the teacher’s manual, teachers are instructed to demonstrate writing the letters while using ‘penmanship rhymes’ which are quick poems of three or four lines each instructing students on how to form each letter.
For example, when teaching how to draw an uppercase L, the rhyme ‘‘Make a tall, straight line/that you start at the top. Come down to the bottom/go out, and stop.’’ is used. An analysis of the number of pages of the teacher’s manual devoted to handwriting instruction indicates that for a typical week approximately 1/3 of a page contains the penmanship rhymes and the rest of the approximately 50 pages are devoted to reading.
Arrow and number cues are used in the manual to demonstrate the sequence of letter formation for the teacher. These arrow and number cues are not on the student workbook pages. As shown in Table 4, the RC begins with a 5 week overview of the entire alphabet, reviewing one letter (uppercase and lowercase together) each day in sequential alphabetical order.
Letters with similar strokes are not introduced together nor are easily confused letters staggered. One initial consonant letter is then reviewed each week for the next 6 weeks. After that, 1–3 initial consonants and one vowel are reviewed each week for the rest of the school year.
The curriculum also provides time for individual and group writing tasks in the form of journals, which are typically an independent writing task, and ‘writing center’ activities, which typically consist of drawing an idea in picture form and labeling it with words studied as a group in class. The explicit instruction on letter formation is limited to the penmanship rhymes and the first practice book page for that letter.
Comparison of RC and HWC and Classroom Implementation
Analysis of the teacher logs, lesson plans, and classroom observations revealed that the HWC lessons did not coincide with the RC lessons, except for one observation day, as shown in Table 5. During the teacher interviews, the teachers confirmed that the letters taught during literacy block very rarely are the same as the letters the OT teaches during the weekly handwriting block.
Teachers expressed frustration about this lack of coordination. In addition, interviews, lesson plans, and classroom observations indicate that the two schools did not progress through the handwriting at the same rate. School 1 went through the HWC exactly as outline in the manual and went at a slow pace. As seen in Table 6, students started writing uppercase letters with pencils in January and the teaching of all the uppercase letters by the end of the school.
The OT indicated that students would not get to lowercase letters until first grade. In School 2, the OT did not follow the HWC as closely as the other school. The OT worked through the pre-writing activities at a faster pace, starting workbook pages with uppercase letters in November and workbook pages with lowercase letters in January.
School 2 finished the HWC workbook pages for both uppercase and lowercase letters by the end of the school year. Neither school was able to implement the ‘‘Handwriting All Year’’ activities recommended in the teacher manual. Both schools completed the RC.
Teacher Training
In the survey, one of the teachers reported having no training on the HWC, two of the teachers reported having informal training by the resident OT and/or PT, and one teacher had participated in an in-service training to use the HWC.
During the interviews, teachers at both schools mentioned that the OTs were very experienced using the HWC and have been using it for 6 or more years. The teachers, however, depended on the OTs for training, used the teacher’s guide, and were ‘‘learning as we go,’’ and ‘‘getting familiar with the terms.’’
Use of Modeling
As seen in Table 3, teachers reported that the use of modeling in their handwriting instruction is a strong priority throughout the school year. The teacher logs also reveal an extensive use of modeling in daily lessons. As seen in Table 7, teachers reported using modeling between 86 and 100% of the time. As mentioned previously, both the RC and HWC instruct teachers to model letter formation when teaching students how to write letters. The classroom observations (see Table 8) reveal that extensive use of modeling is actually implemented in the classroom.
Use of Guided Practice
In the teacher logs, teachers reported guided practice as a focus of their handwriting lessons between 79 and 100% of the time, with more guided practice later in the school year (see Table 7).
Classroom observations revealed that guided practice was evident in 75–100% of the classes observed, with more guided practice at the end of the year than the beginning of the year (see Table 8). The use of several handwriting practices classified as ‘‘guided practice’’ is analyzed separately below.
Specific Practices (Copying, Tracing, Order of Letter Introduction)
In the survey, teachers reported that use of specific practices like copying, tracing, and order of letter introduction were a moderate priority in their handwriting instruction and the importance of this instructional practice did not change over the course of the school year (see Table 3).
The classroom observations confirm that teachers made extensive use of air-writing and copying letters in their daily lessons. In the weekly HWC, the order of letter introduction is designed to be developmentally appropriate and group letters with similar strokes together (i.e., verticals, horizontals, diagonals and easy before hard, for example, uppercase before lowercase). In the literacy block using RC, the order of letter introduction did not group letters with similar strokes or stagger easily confused letters.
Fluency (Writing Frequently, Timed Writing, Independent Practice, Writing From Memory)
The teacher survey indicated that writing fluency was a moderate priority in handwriting instruction (see Table 3). Inspection of lesson plans, teacher logs, classroom observations, and teacher interviews indicate that this priority resulted from the use of frequent writing and practice.
Timed writing and writing from memory were practices that were never observed in the kindergarten classrooms. During the interviews, the teachers said that their goal for their students was to learn how to form the letters. They were not concerned with fluency during kindergarten year.
Writing Mechanics
The teacher survey revealed that teachers placed a high priority on teaching writing mechanics at the beginning of the school year but these instructional practices were less important as the school year progressed (see Table 3). The RC teacher manual contains no directions for teaching and monitoring pencil grip, paper positioning, and posture.
The HWC teacher manual contains detailed instructions about teaching these skills and reinforcing and reviewing them throughout the school year. During the classroom observations, researchers never noted that teachers were teaching, monitoring, or reviewing pencil grip or paper positioning.
Types of Writing Materials Used
Samples of the variety of different types of writing materials that students used over the course of the school year were collected. Approximately seven different types of writing paper were used. Students frequently used slates, white boards and blank paper for practice and journals.
The RC workbook pages for the introduction of letters contain sample letters to be copied (without arrow and number cues to show letter formation) and a rectangular box for writing. The rest of the pages, when letters are reviewed, use wide line primary paper. The HWC pages for capital letters contain shadow boxes for writing individual capital letters, with sample letters that contain numbers and arrows for demonstrating the sequence of letter formation.
The HWC pages for lowercase letters use double-lined paper. The implements used for writing included sponges, chalk, white-board markers, crayons, golf pencils and regular pencils.
Integration of Handwriting Instruction with Recognition
The teacher survey indicates that integration of handwriting instruction with recognition was a very high priority (see Table 3). Inspection of the lesson plans, teacher logs, and classroom observations indicate that the weekly lesson plans incorporated a variety of activities to promote visual recognition of letters, letter formation, phonemic awareness, and guided reading and comprehension.
Inspection of the RC teacher’s manual indicates that the curriculum is designed to integrate letter formation and handwriting within the literacy instruction. Once all the letters of the alphabet have been previewed, each following week reviews the phonics of each consonant as an initial letter and reviews each vowel over a series of 3–5 weeks. The HWC introduces each letter along with a picture of a word that starts with the letter.
During the recommended exercises, children practice writing words that match pictures, writing sentences, writing frequently used words, and searching for letters.
Use of Feedback
The teacher survey results reveal that use of feedback was a moderate priority with a slight increase in priority over the course of the school year (see Table 3). The teacher logs demonstrate a similar pattern that use of corrective feedback was used in 43% of the lessons during Phase 1 and increased to 100% by Phase 3 (see Table 7).
The classroom observations, however, report a decrease in use of corrective feedback during the later parts of the school year (see Table 8). Analysis of the classroom observation notes reveals that teachers did give some individual children corrections but the teachers did not frequently walk around the room to monitor children’s writing during independent practice.
In addition, the observers never saw the teachers collect completed handwriting worksheets or return corrected papers during the literacy block observations. In the teacher interviews, the teachers commented that it is very difficult to give students individual feedback and notice if they are forming the letters incorrectly. They also wondered how important it was that the students form the letters correctly if the ultimate product looks reasonable, especially since handwriting is less important given the prominent use of computers in society.
Self-evaluation
The teacher survey indicated that self-evaluation was a very low priority in handwriting instruction (see Table 3). The HWC recommends that students circle their best letter written. The RC teacher manual contains no instructions for implementing self-evaluation practices. Classroom observations confirm that this was not a practice implemented by teachers as it was never recorded in observer notes.
Teacher Assessment Versus Researcher Assessment
There was a strong, positive, and significant correlation between the report card grades for ‘recognizes letter’ and the researcher assessment of recognition of uppercase and lowercase letters (see Table 9).
As seen in Table 9, the correlations between mean handwriting report card scores and experimental measures of handwriting speed and legibility in both the alphabet writing task and the copying task were moderately strong and significant.
Discussion
The results of this in-depth case study of four kindergarten classrooms revealed that teachers did employ a number of effective strategies recommended in the literature. For example, modeling and guided practice where used extensively in the teaching of handwriting in the observed classes. In addition, handwriting instruction was integrated with recognition and students engaged in a variety of writing tasks throughout the school day (e.g., journals, worksheets, writing on white boards, etc.).
The findings were validated in both teacher self-reports and classroom observations. On the other hand, there were a number of important handwriting instructional techniques that were not emphasized in the classrooms or rated as important by the teachers. Namely, letters were not consistently introduced in an order to avoid confusion, students were not asked to engage in self-evaluation of their handwriting products, writing from memory was not employed throughout the school year, and fluency was not emphasized in instruction.
These are among the most important instructional practices recommended in the literature (e.g., Berninger et al., 1997; Graham, 1992; Graham & Harris, 2002, 2006). Research also suggests that daily practice is optimal and 50–100 min of handwriting instruction per week is recommended (Graham & Miller, 1980). A majority of primary grade teachers in the United States report that they provide an average of 70 min per week of handwriting instruction (Graham et al., 2008). However, the findings from the current case study demonstrate that these recommendations for direct and explicit handwriting instruction and practice were not one of the highest priorities of kindergarten teachers.
This was evident in both the teacher surveys and an examination of weekly class schedules. For example, handwriting instruction as a separate instructional block was absent from their daily schedules. Direct handwriting instruction was concentrated in a once per week instructional block taught by an occupational therapy.
Although classroom observations revealed that children did engage in handwriting activities during other class periods (e.g., literacy block and math journal), those activities are not direct handwriting instruction. This lack of daily explicit handwriting instruction and practice is consistent with Asher’s (2006) finding that only 3 out of 13 teachers in their survey reported using daily practice when teaching new letters.
Similarly, Graham et al. (2008) also expressed concern that the number of times per week that handwriting instruction happens is low. In addition, teachers also seemed to have a lack of knowledge about the most effective teaching strategies as well as some misconceptions about effective methods. For example, the teachers reported that they found verbalizing the steps involved in writing a letter to be very helpful although it is considered to be a questionable practice in the literature (Graham, 1992; Graham & Miller, 1980). The use of this practice was also reported by Graham et al. (2008) in their national teacher survey.
The findings from the current study also indicate that teachers do not uniformly believe handwriting matters much. During the teacher interviews, they wondered how important it was that the students form the letters correctly if the ultimate product looks reasonable. A lack of consistency in teacher attitudes about the importance of handwriting instruction and when and how it should be taught means that it is possible for a child to transition through elementary school without adequate handwriting instruction. Asher (2006) therefore recommended that district-wide initiatives might be needed to ensure that consistent instruction begins early and be carried through to the higher grades.
Consistency in handwriting instruction within the school district would also make it easier for special educators and occupational therapists to provide interventions consistent with classroom practices. In addition, teachers in this study believe that handwriting is less important given the prominent use of computers in society. This confirms the trend for elementary schools to de-emphasizing handwriting skills in favor of computer skills (Levy, 2008; Schlagal 2007).
This is of particular concern since handwriting has been shown to be important in the development of both literacy and writing skills (Berninger et al., 2006; Graham et al., 2000). Furthermore, since learning characters through handwriting has been found to result in better recognition and memory of characters than learning through typing (Longcamp et al., 2008) and different neural pathways are activated in the two tasks, eliminating handwriting instruction could have negative consequences on brain growth and development as well as learning, especially in at-risk populations.
As mentioned above, the kindergarten students in the current study learned handwriting skills as part of their reading/literacy programs and as a part of a class wide OT program, rather than as a separate subject as recommended in the literature (Graham et al., 2008). At School 1, the OT followed the HWC curriculum guide much more strictly than School 2 and as a result the letters were introduced at a much slower pace.
During the interviews, teachers expressed that their students were not developmentally ready for a more rapidly paced instruction. As a result, kindergarten students in School 1 completed direct instruction of uppercase letters only while those in School 2 finished uppercase and lowercase letters.
However, neither school had time for any of the review and practice exercises that are recommended in the literature (e.g., Graham & Harris, 2002) and the HWC curriculum. The limited once a week direct handwriting instruction seemed to have a huge impact on the amount of content covered and on the ability to deliver quality handwriting instruction that implements research approved effective strategies.
The teachers in this study reported that they received very little instruction or training devoted to the teaching of handwriting. Their source of training was limited to informal gathering of information from the OT who had training in the handwriting curriculum. Hence, some classroom teachers did not feel comfortable using the HWC methods during other handwriting activities throughout the school day and were only able to use the terminology.
This is consistent with Graham et al.’s (2008) findings that teachers have very little formal education in teaching handwriting. It is a concern that teachers are not aware of quality research-based strategies in handwriting instruction and are not trained in how to implement these strategies in the classroom. Therefore, there is a great need for training, especially in teacher preparation programs and/or through district-wide professional development programs (Asher, 2006). Quality of instruction is based on both the instructional methodology as well as the content of the lesson.
The findings from the comparison of the two main curriculums (i.e., HWC and RC) used by participating schools suggest that there is room for improvement in the content of the lessons of commercially available curriculums (see Table 10). First, since not all schools use separate handwriting curriculums, the only handwriting instruction some children receive is in the context of the commercially available literacy curriculum.
As a result, these programs should make more of an effort to update teacher manuals and worksheets to reflect research-based practices not only in teaching reading but also in handwriting. For example, rather than introducing the letters in alphabetical order, the order of letter introduction could be changed to minimize letter confusion. Second, the sequences of letter introduction in both curriculums did not coincide with one another, which may cause confusion for kindergarten children.
Commercially available handwriting curriculums should include explicit instructions for teachers about how to integrate their writing program with the literacy curriculums. If the kindergarten classrooms in our sample are representative, many school districts mandate using a commercially available reading curriculum and thus teachers need some guidance about how to implement best practices in the context of the constraints of the reading curriculum.
In addition, since handwriting instruction was not the primary focus of the literacy curriculum we reviewed, many of the best practices in teaching handwriting were not used as shown in Table 10. For example, use of arrows and numbers for letter formation, emphasis on fluency, use of self-evaluation, and daily direct handwriting instruction, are all recommended in the literature (Berninger et al., 1997; Graham & Miller, 1980; Graham et al., 2008) but not found in the teacher manuals. Not surprisingly, teachers therefore did not frequently use many of these research-based effective strategies when teaching handwriting.
As expected, there is a higher correlation between report card grades and letter recognition than between report card grades and handwriting. This may be because grading of letter recognition is much more objective and has fewer unambiguous standards for teachers to apply in assigning grades, compared to grading of handwriting which can be more subjective. This confirms the findings of previous studies (Armitage & Ratzlaff, 1985; Graham et al., 2008) that teachers’ assessment of handwriting may be rather subjective.
More research is needed to establish effective handwriting assessment devices for teachers and training for teachers to use them. The current in-depth analysis of these four inner city kindergarten classrooms suggests many possibilities for future research. In our research, handwriting instruction by the teachers was primarily based on a commercially available reading curriculum. However, the analysis of this curriculum revealed that it did not incorporate many best-practices in handwriting instruction.
Future research should explore the widespread prevalence of reliance on commercially available literacy curriculums for handwriting instruction and analyze these curriculums to discover how well they reflect the best handwriting instructional practices recommended in the literature. In addition, future research should explore whether, in practice, handwriting and reading curriculums are coordinated and complement one another; or whether there are discrepancies and conflicts between the curriculums such as introducing letters in different orders, as seen in our test schools.
Additional research is also needed to explore the impact of these discrepancies or conflicts on students’ learning. It is important that handwriting instruction is effective for all students including struggling writers. Graham and Harris (2005) reported that teachers do not typically differentiate their teaching for struggling writers. Therefore, research is also needed to examine if the implementation of research-based practices in actual classrooms is appropriate for students with diverse backgrounds, learning abilities, and disabilities. Implementation of empirically-validated educational practices in classrooms across the nation is important.
More research is needed to evaluate teacher awareness of the literature. In addition, the research should explore the effectiveness of teacher training and on-going technical assistance on bringing research approved strategies to actual practice in the classroom.
In summary, the current in-depth case study investigated how handwriting instruction is delivered by teachers and the impact of these practices on the ability of students to acquire appropriate and efficient handwriting skills in kindergarten. This approach makes a contribution to a needed area of research by using both quantitative and qualitative methods, employing a longitudinal design, and evaluating how handwriting is taught in kindergarten where handwriting instruction begins (Asher, 2006; Edwards, 2003; Graham et al., 2008).
Our findings suggest that in order to ensure quality handwriting instruction for young children, a district-wide program may be needed. A consistent program within a school district would ensure that teachers use uniform instruction that helps students master handwriting skills easily (Asher, 2006). The program should enforce the use of effective research approved strategies (see Table 1), for example, daily explicit handwriting instruction using numbered arrows and memory retrieval, modeling, and self-evaluation (Berninger et al., 1997; Edwards, 2003; Graham et al., 2008).
In order for teachers to deliver quality instruction, they should be well-trained on effective handwriting instructional practices. They also should be provided with an assessment tool that objectively assesses their students’ handwriting. Furthermore, both literacy and handwriting curriculum may need to allow some flexibility for teachers so that they complement and reinforce one another, therefore, enhance the quality of teaching and learning of handwriting skills. The effectiveness of the integrated literacy and handwriting program should be regularly assessed.
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