Saturday, August 16, 2008

Handwriting Speed

Handwriting speed. I have just tried to assist my son with increasing his handwriting speed - although I wouldn't have put him as slow with writing he has requested that he wants to write faster- to beat one of the girls in his class that he often competes with.

Therefore he has the motivation to work on this issue. What I did next was write out the "lazy dog jumps over" sentence, and asked him to copy it as fast as possible but still tidy enough that I or his teacher would growl at him. His first attempt he wrote 10 letters in 15 seconds. I then re-wrote the sentence so that he would have a tidy model to copy from and encouraged him to do it again. We did this several times however after the third try I created different sentences so that it was still novel. However this time I asked him if he knew how to spell a word to only look at it once from the model, and write it down. If it was a harder word that he didn't know I showed him how to break the word into segments , scanning the word, copying three letters down and then re-looking at the word. My thinking being that copying words in chunks would be quicker than copying a word letter by letter.


By the end of six practices he has increased to 17 letters per fifteen seconds. An improvement of seven letters with the quality of his writing still being tidy. During the practices he did drop in his rate of writing, we noted that this was when he wrote larger, or when he looked away. Therefore his strategies to be a faster writer include writing with small (normal size) letters, to spell from memory if he knows the word, and to break the words down into chunks if it is a word he doesn't know how to spell. That and just increasing his awareness that actively trying to write faster and staying focused on the task assists in speed of writing.


This was a few hours ago that we did this task. I think I will get him to copy a novel sentence again and see if he has stayed stable in his ability.

Rita

7 comments:

Occupational Therapy Otago said...

Hi Rita
Nice to see you still blogging. I'm interested to know how your son is going. Is he still keen to improve his speed, and is he faster yet than the girl in his class?
I think there is huge value in children learning to trust their own spelling and in learning to write words they need to copy by chunking the syllables. I have seen so many children who write so slowly as they copy letter by letter and who then loose the meaning or forget what they wanted to say. Once he has mastered writing faster what about introducing him to Freerice (either google freerice or use the link from my blog), he can donate rice to those in need whilst building his vocabulary. After all a good vocab makes spelling and writing easier.
jackie

Anonymous said...

Hi Jackie, how lovely of you to pop into our blog. I will follow up the Freerice suggestion.

To answer you query about his speed, yes he did improve and quickly as well. We only practiced twice, two nights running, and then talked about it on the way to school about the strategies he was going to use. The task he wanted to be quicker at was a comprehension type task when they would read a short book and then have to answer questions about it. Therefore it involved remembering what had happened in the story, flicking back and finding that part to answer the questions, copying some of the core words from the text and then also creation of answers. Not to mention not being distracted by those in his group also doing the same or different tasks. This was something that he mentioned early that he wasn't laughing and joining in with the silliness of the class and still wasn't getting though his work, that annoyed him, I think he felt that since he was focused that coming first should naturally occur, especially as his rival was able to take time out to join in on the silliness a little bit.

My son informs me that he is getting finished first with the correct answers. When I asked him if he still uses the strategies we talked about, he said that really he thought he was doing better that his girl class mate as she hadn't been at school as often. This made me laugh as there is research out there that talks about young children do not relate there success to strategies but more to good luck, thus they are inconsistent in applying them. Thus stressing the need explicit teaching of when to apply them and demonstrating the connection between the two factors. However I think my son also highlights a valid point that practice and opportunity are huge factors and that becoming more familiar with how to do the task has also probably added to his increase in speed.

Once again thanks for you comment, at times in blog writing I feel a bit like I'm talking to myself, but I have faith that the blog will get more interactive in time, and if not it is quite a good place to store resources , thoughts and reflections.

Take care Rita

Unknown said...

Hi Rita!
I must thank you profoundly for this tip. I have been surfing the net for a while for blogs and articles to help me increase my younger brother's as well as mine writng speed. We usually get complains from his teacher about how slow he writes and when we ask him what the problem is;he says that it is the teacher who erases the board too quick as if the bell was going to ring in just about a minute!...I have been giving him assignments such as a page or se to complete as fast as he could, but guess it was a bit too much!Thank you again for your idea!..I shall try your method and hope he would do as well as your son; Inshallah!

With a heart full of well-wishes;
Moina

Anonymous said...

I too have been surfing the Web looking for ways to help my daughter (9 years old) to speed up her handwriting. She will be doing some tests early next year to enter into a new school and currently her scores aren't good enough. What she writes is absolutely fine, she just completes only two thirds of the test paper. I asked her today which was faster, her head or her hand and she was unequivocal that it was her hand slowing her down! We will try timing some sentences and see if we can work out some strategies to help her speed up.

Manish said...

hello mrs. Rita. I am a 3rd yr enginnering student. Although i have been performing well in my studies, but i think my grades do not match my level of satisfaction. This is because my handwriting speed is not fast enough to complete the 100 marks exam in 3 hours, and a few questions are left unattempted. Can u please guide me well on how should i boost up my writing speed. Its really gonna help me a lot.. Thank you.

Manoj said...

hi Rita, I am a student of MCA 1 yr. I have d same prob dat manish has told. I am not able to complete my exam questions fully. some of them r left unattempted often. I m not able to get good marks as I can get by writing faster..I am vry frustrated by dis..so plz help me.

Manoj said...

is dis bloging closed????