How PE Can Help Improve Children’s Handwriting
Colin Grimes is leading his school's effort to improve handwriting through physical strength and exercise, as well as in discrete lessons, without turning it into a chore for kids
- by Colin Grimes
My handwriting has never been that good. In fact, when I was a child starting primary school in Motherwell, the comment was I would end up as a doctor or a lawyer because my writing was so poor.
This continued through school until I discovered computer science and typewriting at GCSE. After that I found I could pretty much avoid handwriting like the proverbial plague, simply trusting Microsoft to help me craft my words into legible form.
Fast forward 26 years and I now find myself having to teach handwriting in a small first school.
Like many teachers I have had no formal training as part of my ITT in teaching handwriting but, after a chance meeting with Lois Addy at a partnership training day, I have taken on the mantle for delivering handwriting interventions in my school.
What first took me about Lois’ approach was the idea that strength for handwriting must be developed.
Given our determination to get children walking as soon as they leave the womb (walkers, bouncers etc) the development of muscle in the shoulder girdle is often overlooked.
Once we look at this it becomes common sense; a child who crawls develops muscle around the shoulders which aids in their writing in later years.
So with all of that in mind, how do we solve the problem of poor handwriting?
In my school I have been looking at the role physical fitness plays. Observing children with poor handwriting in the act of writing, coupled with using the Lois Addy writing assessments led me to thinking that PE can play a massive role in the development of handwriting ability.
With this in mind, and as PE coordinator (in a small, rural school you wear multiple hats) I designed a circuit training programme for our Year 3 and 4 children that would promote general fitness whilst building on shoulder, core and pelvic girdle strength.
I discussed with the children what we were setting out to achieve and, with most things in primary education, they rose to the challenge.
Our study, whilst small scale, shows that regular exercise can aid in improving handwriting.
In my own class several children who have previously been diagnosed as poor writers have made marked improvement.
Posture has played a part, and the use of exercise to develop core strength (as a school we also do Mile a Day or GoNoodle in inclement weather) every day has certainly helped.
Class teachers are implicitly teaching handwriting as a discrete skill too, allowing me to concentrate on the “worst” cases in school as part of a teacher-led intervention round.
In this, assessment is key. Initial assessment of a piece of writing (details in Addy’s book) give an overall score but, more importantly, identify which writing skill has the most issues.
Grouping children, not by age, but by handwriting difficulty means that like problems can be addressed across a key stage rather than a class (my intervention group currently has Y2, 3 and 4 children in) and true like comparisons can be made.
Small changes can be made to posture, pencil/pen grip, paper angle etc to an individual child.
Looking at breaking down handwriting improvement to these small steps can see immediate change. Allowing children to keep some of their existing style whilst improving their writing is a powerful tool.
Telling children that what they do is OK but here is something to make it better has been an angle I have used in all my teaching to date.
The idea that it is acceptable to get something wrong as long as we learn from it and improve really gives ownership to the individual rather than just telling them they are wrong.
With this in mind my intervention group are making rapid improvements to the way they write and we are now seeing fully legible, cursive writing (a whole other argument) from all of the children in the group.
All of this takes time though. Improving handwriting is not an overnight process and it is not as simple as the headteacher doing a book scrutiny and saying handwriting must improve.
Children must see a range of styles of writing, using different implements, until they find something that they are comfortable with. Enforcing a “house style” to a class of Y2 children removes the joy of writing as we concentrate simply on mechanics.
This is where a handwriting scheme fails; we do not treat children as individuals and differentiate for them. A poorly gripped pencil will remain poorly gripped, what we can do is teach the child to work within their limitations to improve their writing.
My trial will continue for the remainder of the academic year.
I am also looking at the purchase of a trapeze or monkey bars for our EYFS children to help develop that shoulder strength.
At the moment nothing is off limits as we look for novel ways to improve our children’s writing. First and foremost though we need to make handwriting less of a chore. If we can improve writing by “stealth” then children need not feel punished for having “poor” handwriting.
Handwriting issues, for all our dalliances with technology, will not go away in the near future.
What we need to do is form a sensible approach to handwriting policy within our settings, not restrict children to a house style and do everything in our power to give children the ability to help themselves.
When a child who never normally sees their writing on the wall gets a presentation award then you know what you are doing is having an effect.
Colin Grimes is a Year 4 teacher in a small Northumbrian first school. He is in his second year of teaching after graduating from Cohort 1 of the Troops to Teachers programme run by the University of Brighton. He can be found on Twitter @MrGPrimary and blogs at mrgprimary.com. Browse ideas for National Fitness Day.
