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Mastery in handwriting?
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I have a 7.5-year old and a 5-year old. We do handwriting daily, but I feel the older child is not improving much over the last few months. (We do D’Nealian, or, “modern” manuscript.) Do I need to literally sit there w/ her to ensure every stroke is right, the slant is right, etc.? Or, is handwriting something I can just give her a workbook page/assignment to do w/o me there (after original instruction on how to write the letters, etc.) Sometimes I feel she does a sloppy job (habit-training?!) b/c she doesn’t enjoy it and wants to just get it done so she can go outside. Today I made her redo the whole thing b/c she wasn’t putting forth her best effort the first time around.
With the younger child, do I just introduce one letter at a time until it’s mastered, or do I introduce it then a few days later, move on? Thanks for your help. We are new to SCM and appreciate the feedback! I really want our next year’s school year to be very focused on the 3 R’s, and mastering them as much as we can for the levels they’re at. God bless.
You’re right, the main focus should be on quality over quantity. So, yes, encourage your students to do their best effort, but you may want to scale back on the amount you are requiring. If you require a small amount of “perfect” work, it won’t seem insurmountable and you will help foster that habit of best effort. So for your older child, how much is “the whole thing” that she had to redo? Charlotte talked about the goal being one line perfectly done. The child may need to copy that line more than once in order to get it perfect, but once it’s perfect she is done.
With the younger child, don’t worry about pencil and paper at this point. Introduce a new letter, then let the child draw it on a whiteboard or in a pan of sand or in the air. It’s much easier to erase an “imperfect” part and redraw it that way. If you do feel the need to do paper and pencil, don’t use lined paper at this age. Work with large motor skills, rather than small motor skills. Once the child has learned enough letters to make a word, do so. The sooner the child can see the letters coming together for a purpose — to make a word — the more motivating and fun the writing lesson can be.
My son is 7 1/2 and he literally hates handwriting. We were doing 4 days of copying small poems and he would cry. I went down to two days and he is much happier. And I made the poems even shorter. He is excelling in other areas and I don’t want to focus too much on his weakness so we are taking it slow. I require that he does it well but I sit with him as he writes so we can make corrections during the lesson instead of starting all over. In the past I made him start all over and he was so defeated that I felt it was not a good choice to do it that way for him. So yes I sit with him during that subject and if I see he made a mistake he only has to erase that one word. I also use stickers, he can get up to three stickers on his page if he does well. It’s amazing even at 7 how much he enjoys getting the positive recognition. I understand that it is hard for him and want to help him work through the challenge in a positive way to form a pattern for overcoming obstacles in the future. I let him pick the poem and that also makes a big difference. He’s still doing the task (which is non-negotiable) but I’m involving him more in the process. I started him on his letters at 5 and then stopped and waited until he was 6 and it was much better. Hope this helps.
Ladies, Thank you very much for your encouragement. I had been using a program this year (not continuing next year) that had the kids writing as a narration each week, along w/ a drawing. The 7-yr old started out loving it; now she dreads it. I think I had her writing too much (like 3-4 sentences). When I give her a smaller amount, her work is much better. For now, I suppose I should write her oral narrations out, and let her do the drawings.
Our 5-year-old son would technically be finishing preschool this year, if in traditional schooling. But he is reading at close to a second-grade level already! I think I just started thinking he “needed” to begin learning handwriting b/c that’s the next natural step. However, at such a young reading age, I guess I should back off the writing attempts. That’s fine by me . . . one less thing to accomplish!
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