Starting a blog in the year 2020 with the phrase ‘when I was at school’ is a scary thought, but in this case I think it has merit. Because…
When I was at school, we were taught handwriting. An explicit lesson on a weekly basis on how to sit correctly at a writing desk; our feet to be in the invisible shoebox under the desk, our backs straight and heads high. We sang our little hearts out (well, I did!) on the handwriting song as we warmed up our fingers, preparing our hands for the fine-motor skill of correctly forming letters. Our teachers taught us the 3 S’s of handwriting, sizing, slope and spacing. And as my chubby fingers measured out the distance between each word, I learnt an important skill; how to write.
It seems to be a skill of the past. Neat, joined, fluid handwriting that can be maintained for lengths of time seems to be a skill that was deemed no longer important. Typing was the wave of the future. But as I watch my students hack away at a keyboard, I ask the same question of ‘What Happened to Teaching Touch-typing?’ If we remove teaching a ‘redundant’ skill, shouldn’t we have replaced it with another?
My previous teaching position was in a K-12 school, where more and more of our students were being referred to Occupational Therapists in the middle to upper years of secondary school because they were having issues maintaining their handwriting for the length of an exam. For years we had been speculating that all exams would be typed by their leaving years, but alas; no. A blind eye has been turned to the correct formation of letters and the skill of handwriting, and now, it seems, education systems are starting to see again.
The Australian National Curriculum highlights that by a Year 4 standard, children should be able to: ‘Write using clearly-formed joined letters, and develop increased fluency and automaticity.’ The United Kingdom’s Department of Education states that in order for a child to be considered at expected standards of Key Stage 2, children will need to: ‘demonstrate joined up handwriting, using the diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join letters in most of their writing’. America Standards are at a similar stage of development; by Year 4 students should ‘Form legible letters and numerals using cursive writing. Write words, using proper joinings, legibly in cursive.’ So why is this skill not being taught and adhered to?
I have generally taught in the upper years of primary school and while I may have commented on how a child was holding a pencil and handed out a ‘pen licence’ or two for those who were neat and fluid writers, it never occurred to me to explicitly teach a handwriting lesson; that was the job of the early years teachers!
But, my time has come and I now spend a day a week in a Year 1 classroom. While these standards continue to be current, I feel it would be a disservice not to teach these students of mine how to handwrite. So, for an explicit lesson a week, with on-going and in-time reminders, we sit with our feet in an invisible shoebox and we focus on the size, the shape, the slope and the formation of our letters.
I do this, not because it was what I did ‘back when I was at school’ but, because it is what we should have always done at school.
