Read the Full Story: National Public Radio (5/11) (more…)

National Handwriting Day is celebrated on January 23rd each year. It is a day dedicated to promoting the importance of handwriting and encouraging people to embrace the art of writing by hand. This day was established to honor the birthday of John Hancock, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, known for his prominent and stylish signature on the Declaration of Independence. Handwriting is considered a personal and unique form of expression, and National Handwriting Day aims to celebrate and preserve this traditional skill.

Articles on handwriting from Ask a Tech Teacher:

Check these out:

When is Typing Faster Than Handwriting?

Is Handwriting So Last Generation

Is Handwriting So Last Generation–Redux

How to Create a Handwriting Workbook to Help Improve Penmanship

Handwriting vs. Keyboarding–from a Student’s Perspective

When is Typing Faster Than Handwriting? (more…)

Most elementary-age students struggle with typing. This doesn’t surprise me. They’ve been handwriting since kindergarten. They’re proud of their new cursive skills. It’s easy to grab a pencil. Typing requires setting up their posture, hand position, trying to remember where all those pesky keys are (why aren’t they just alphabetized? Discuss that with students).

In third grade, we chat about why they learn to keyboard when they can already handwrite–faster. The discussion eventually ends up with a comparison of handwriting and keyboarding:

• Discuss whether students handwrite faster/slower than they type. You are likely to get opinions on both sides of this discussion. If not, prod students with logic for both.
• When it’s clear the class is divided on this subject (or not–that’s fine too), run an experiment to see which is faster—handwriting or typing.
• Circle back to science class and engage in a discussion on the Scientific Method. Develop a hypothesis for this class research, something like: Third grade students in Mr. X’s class can handwrite faster than they type (this is the most common opinion in my classes).
• Have students hand-copy the typing quiz they took earlier in the trimester for 3 minutes.
• Analyze the results: Compare their handwriting speed to their typing speed. I encourage an individual comparison as well as a class average comparison to help with understanding the conclusion.
• Discuss results: Why do students think some students typed faster and others typed slower? (In my classes, third graders typed approx. 10 wpm and handwrote approx. 15 wpm. Discussion was heated and enthusiastic on reasons. Especially valuable were the thoughts of those rare students who typed faster).
• Students will offer lots of reasons for slower typing (they’re new to typing, don’t do it much in class, their hands got off on the keyboard). In truth, the logistics of typing make it the hands-down winner once key placement is secured. Fingers on a keyboard are significantly faster than the moving pencil.
• One reason students suggest is that they don’t usually type from copy. Key in on this reason (quite valid, I think—don’t you?) and revise the experiment to have students type and handwrite from a prompt.
• What is the final conclusion?
• If possible, share results from 4-8^th. What grade level do students consistently type faster than they handwrite? Why? Are students surprised by the answer?
• Post a list on the wall of students who type faster than they handwrite. This surprises everyone.

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One of our Ask a Tech Teacher contributors use this to help her student improve their handwriting. This is a great way to incorporate journaling with handwriting skills for learning students. See if you agree:

Create a Handwriting Workbook to Improve Penmanship

It is no news that practice makes perfect, and this saying certainly applies if you want to improve your handwriting. Learning to modify your handwriting can be a challenge as a person’s writing style is mostly just muscle memory. 

The reason you write a certain way is simple; you have always written like that. To improve penmanship, you must dedicate yourself to a process that takes both time and commitment. 

On that note, here’s how to create a handwriting workbook to help improve penmanship.

Determine Your Goals

The first step to make before you start a handwriting workbook is to map out your goals.

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I wrote about the demise of handwriting 2.5 years ago. Seems even truer now than then. One problem for both sides is that Common Core is ‘silent’ on it, according to the Alliance for Excellence in Education. That’s like the Fat Lady warming up, but not sure when she’ll be performing. Where Common Core has a lot to say about many tools required to deliver the education that will lead to college and career for students, it doesn’t mention ‘cursive’ at all. Though Common Core allows for a nominal amount of personalizing–meaning add-ons–only eleven states (as of publication) have amended their education requirements to mandate cursive be included in the curriculum. Not a ringing endorsement. Headlines such as these proliferate in the news:

Technology may script an end to the art of cursive writing

Is cursive’s day in classroom done?

No longer swearing by cursive writing

Studies show one in three children struggle with handwriting. I’d guess more, seeing it first hand as a teacher. Sound bad? Consider another study that one in five parents say they last penned a letter more than a year ago.

Let’s look at the facts. Students handwrite badly, and don’t use it much when they grow up (think about yourself. How often do you write a long hand letter?). Really, why is handwriting important in this day of keyboards, PDAs, smart phones, spellcheck, word processing? I start students on MS Word in second grade, about the same time their teacher is beginning cursive. Teach kids the rudiments and turn them over to the tech teacher for keyboarding.

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Every year, I have 4th-grade students compare handwriting speed to keyboarding speed. We run it like an experiment.

• we discuss the evidence–pros and cons
• we develop a hypothesis
• we test the hypothesis (with a series of four tests)
• we revise if necessary

I wanted to test some of the reasons students come up with on both sides of this issue. I framed the discussion with Common Core standards for keyboarding as well as my school’s guidelines:

• students must type 25 wpm by 4th grade, 30 by 5th, 35 by 6th, 40 by 7th, 45 by 8th
• students must type 2 pages in a single seating. That roughly 500 words. at the 4th grade required speed, that’s 20 minutes of typing at a single sitting

Since fourth graders for both years I’ve done this have (from a show of hands) believed handwriting was faster, I put that as pro. I should note: The pros and cons were verbal the first two times I did this. The third time, I wrote them on the SmartScreen as students commented:

Pro–handwriting is faster

• • students are better at it. They’ve had more practice

• • don’t have to search for the keys
  • I can handwrite forever. Keyboarding–I get frustrated
  • Have to use two keys for some symbols which slows it down
  • Hand gets tired

• • Gives you writers bump if you do it too long—hurts for 4^th graders

Con–keyboarding is faster than handwriting

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Most elementary-age students struggle with typing. This doesn’t surprise me. They’ve been handwriting since kindergarten. They’re proud of their new cursive skills. It’s easy to grab and pencil and write. Typing, though requires setting up their posture, hand position, trying to remember where all those pesky keys are (why aren’t they just alphabetized? It’s a good point. Discuss that with students).

In third grade, I gather the students and we chat about it. Why do they have to learn to keyboard? It’s more than a skill they trot out for the keyboarding software and then forget. Discuss the idea of sharing ideas–the Gutenberg Press, when writing began with scrolls and rocks, why was it important to save ideas in perpetuity? Why is it important to students?

The discussion should come around to the idea that putting ideas in some sort of permanent fashion is important to the history of mankind. The question is how, and the ‘how’ that’s relevant to the students is a comparison of handwriting and keyboarding. Here’s where we go from there:

• Discuss whether students handwrite faster/slower than they type. Ask students to share thoughts on why their opinion is true. You are likely to get opinions on both sides of this discussion. If not, prod students with logic for both.
• When it’s clear the class is divided on this subject (or not–that’s fine too), suggest running an experiment to see which is faster—handwriting or typing.
• Circle back to science class and engage in a discussion on the Scientific Method. Develop a hypothesis for this class research, something like: Third grade students in Mr. X’s class can handwrite faster than they type (this is the most common opinion in my classes).
• Have students hand-copy the typing quiz they took earlier in the trimester for 3 minutes.
• Analyze the results: Compare their handwriting speed to their typing speed. I encourage an individual comparison as well as a class average comparison to help with understanding the conclusion.
• Discuss results: Why do students think some students typed faster and others typed slower? (In my classes, third graders typed approx. 10 wpm and handwrote approx. 15 wpm. Discussion was heated and enthusiastic on reasons. Especially valuable were the thoughts of those rare students who typed faster).
• Students will offer lots of reasons for slower typing (they’re new to typing, don’t do it much in class, their hands got off on the keyboard). In truth, the logistics of typing make it the hands-down winner once key placement is secured. Fingers on a keyboard are significantly faster than the moving pencil.
• One reason students suggest is that they don’t usually type from copy. Key in on this reason (quite valid, I think—don’t you?) and revise the experiment to have students type and handwrite from a prompt.
• What is the final conclusion?
• If possible, share results from 4-8^th. What grade level do students consistently type faster than they handwrite? Why? Are students surprised by the answer?
• Post a list on the wall of students who type faster than they handwrite. This surprises everyone.

(more…)

Another problem for cursive in schools: Common Core is ‘silent’ on it, according to the Alliance for Excellence in Education. That’s like the Fat Lady warming up, but not sure when she’ll be performing.

Studies show one in three children struggle with handwriting. I’d guess more, seeing it first hand as a teacher. Sound bad? Consider another study shows that one in five parents say they last penned a letter more than a year ago.

Let’s look at the facts. Students hand-write badly, and don’t use it much when they grow up (think about yourself. How often do you write a long hand letter?). Really, why is handwriting important in this day of keyboards, PDAs, smart phones, spellcheck, word processing? I start students on MS Word in second grade, about the same time their teacher is beginning cursive. Teach kids the rudiments and turn them over to the tech teacher for keyboarding.

I searched for reasons why I was wrong. Here’s what I found:

• 1 in 10 Americans are endangered by the poor handwriting of physicians.
• citizens miss out on $95,000,000 in tax refunds because the taxman can’t read their handwriting
• Poor handwriting costs businesses $200,000,000 in time and money that result in confused and inefficient employees, phone calls made to wrong numbers, and letters delivered to incorrect addresses.

Read on:

Schools: Less cursive, more keyboarding

BROWNSBURG, Ind., Aug. 28 (UPI) —

Officials in an Indiana school district said cursive writing lessons will be scaled down this year in favor of computer keyboarding.

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