Literacy Talks

The Write Stuff: Handwriting Instruction and Why It Matters for Literacy

• Reading Horizons • Season 4 • Episode 12

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Students’ ability to write fluently is important for literacy success. This episode tackles how we can confidently and carefully teach handwriting so students can make critical connections between the shape of letters, the construction of words, and the meaning of their writing and reading. From helping young learners write legibly to building knowledge of the alphabet, this episode will give every educator new ways to think about writing automaticity and fluency. Our terrific hosts share tips, tricks, and resources they turn to as they teach handwriting to students and educators alike. 

So pop in those earbuds and get ready to take notes about teaching students to write in this episode of Literacy Talks! 


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Narrator:

Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to literacy talks, a podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us all improve our professional practice knowledge and confidence in teaching reading. Our host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor at Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert and literacy and special education and Lindsay Kemeny, and author, speaker and elementary teacher. Today's episode takes a much needed look at a critical component of literacy, its handwriting, and how we teach young learners to form letters legibly, and connect their ability to form letters and words to reading and speaking. The goal is to help students become fluent writers and readers. That's the right idea. Let's get started.

Stacy Hurst:

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. I'm your host Stacy Hurst. And I'm joined by Lindsay Kemeny and Donell Pons as they am every week as we discuss a topic related to literacy. Today, Danelle has chosen a really interesting topic. And I actually am looking forward to talking about this not something we talk about all the time in this space, but it's important and Donell I will give you the honor of introducing a topic.

Donell Pons:

Great. So yes, Stacy, you're right when we were discussing literacy, and we have many topics that we discuss. Writing came up and handwriting and it comes up often. And it comes up more often, I think lately than it used to, which is good that we're having these conversations. But it got us to thinking that it is an integral part of what we do, and what we see with students. And so we should be discussing it. And there are a lot of thoughts that are floating around about handwriting too. So it's also always good to discuss something that folks are talking about. But one thing that's kind of interesting to kick off the conversation. I was looking at a book that was recommended years ago by Dr. David Kilpatrick. He talks about a book by Jerome Rosner and Rosner, someone he references quite a bit and it's helping children overcome learning difficulties. And in this book, there's a section on writing. And I thought this was interesting. He starts off this section and it's like page 79 of this book, not a very big book, and he says almost every kindergarten child is taught the manuscript letters. cursive is not introduced until second or third grade. And now I would argue, it may never be introduced, right? We've even moved away from introducing it at all. But he continues, this was not always so in pre World War Two days, cursive was taught from the beginning. And good penmanship was an important educational goal. So they were taught cursive from the beginning, pre World War Two, then along with the educational revolution in reading manuscript replaced cursive as the first written symbol system, the child learned this is really going to blow some minds, those folks who just don't even teach cursive all together, can you imagine it was the beginning of how you taught a student to write. And the rationale the beginning reader has to learn to read books printed in the manuscript alphabet. That's the rationale behind why they switch which is interesting. So he or she may as well learn also how to print that alphabet. In addition, it was argued the transition between manuscript and cursive would not be difficult. Children merely had to learn to connect the separate manuscript letters with arcs or loops. Anyway, he goes on. But I thought that was really interesting to kind of think about at the beginning to how we've shifted over time, many times how we feel about introducing writing. And so I kind of wanted to begin there with the conversation. And that is, Introduction to handwriting. Jerome Rosner has introduced us to a shift over time. Stacy, you have taught in a first grade setting Lindsay, you are teaching currently in those early elementary grades? What is the current Stacy when you were teaching? What was the philosophy about handwriting then and what you taught versus and then we're gonna hear from Lindsay currently, what's being asked and said,

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, so I actually erroneously took the opinion and I was taught this in college. That letter formation is not as important as legibility. So the way you form it. The main thing is that you can read the handwriting. So I think that we can parallel that kind of balanced literacy. Focus on the important thing is not decoding the text but comprehending it. I see it in parallel to that. And I learned much later, that was wrong. Handwriting

Lindsay Kemeny:

support. To me, I don't know if I was really, I mean, I don't remember what I was taught, I don't know, you know, I just know how it is, I guess at my school and in my classroom. And we all talk about how important the formation is. And it's really hard like breaking those habits when students come in, and they all write their letters from the bottom. And so I spend a lot of time teaching them the correct formation. Interesting.

Donell Pons:

So it's letter formation that's discussed. And then Lindsay, can you pick up a thread for us? Has there been a piece that's been added to the handwriting that's come with the science of reading in terms of trying to connect the symbol with the sound or not? I

Lindsay Kemeny:

don't hear people talk about it much. I will say there is because you were talking about how they used to do cursive before manuscripts. But there is research that manuscripts learning to write manuscript letters helps them with their reading. And there's a research study, I'm pretty sure yeah, it's Berninger 1997, where they found that teaching manuscript handwriting lead to improved word reading, and sometimes I don't think we think about that. But helping them write those letters is going to help them learn their reading a little better. So

Donell Pons:

I'm glad you picked that thread up, too, because I thought it was interesting that at the time, it was a thought process. Oh, it just makes sense that it would probably be better for the students. If they're learning to write the letter in the same form they're reading right, then I'm glad that you've brought us up to date with research Berninger, and I'm sure others that have research to back that up.

Stacy Hurst:

So it seems like print or manuscript actually was in response to the printing press. Yeah. Yeah. Before we did write in cursive format. So it makes sense that that research says that it helps students that they're reading because that's what we are reading. In print. Yeah. Right.

Donell Pons:

Very good. So let's take apart the four components that are mentioned by another many ways to discuss handwriting, but William Van Cleave in his writing matters, bookcase left many great things, this being one. And he had four key components that he listened his book, and he has a lot of things that he covers, not just handwriting, this is a portion. And he says one, four key components number one letter and word formation, pencil grip, and paper positioning must be directly and explicitly taught and practice. Let's discuss this for a minute. Do you see that happening? What are your thoughts? Lindsay how about you do

Lindsay Kemeny:

I see it happening? I don't.

Donell Pons:

I mean,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I see it happening my class. But I think that's an area that I can totally improve on. You know, it's my handwriting instruction. I don't have like a handwriting program or anything, I just kind of work on it. But we do a lot of things like to help the grip, especially in kindergarten, but even, you know, during, after COVID, and I was teaching second grade, and I had a little guy in my classroom, who just was holding it, it was second grade, but he had not been in school all of first grade, and had not done much writing at home. And so he came in with a really unusual grip. And it was really hard time because like, the younger they are, the easier it is to try to help them you know, get a grip that's going to be efficient and help them right, because that's the thing with the grip is that it just helps you so your hand doesn't get tired. It's not about oh, it doesn't look right, right, you're able to write more if you have a cuppa, a good grip, I don't know it's correct the right word. I know there's a couple different ones that are accepted. But that makes it so the child's can write more without getting fatigued. Very

Donell Pons:

good. And Stacy is, as Lindsay is talking here, I'm thinking of you instructing educators coming into the field and you have very little time as it is to teach very important things. How much time do you have to discuss these aspects very important. They may be how much time you have to discuss them. Not

Stacy Hurst:

a lot, not a lot of time. And I know I've said before telling is not teaching and I think this is an area that I'm absolutely telling. We're not spending a ton of time on that. I will say though, my sister teaches preschool and she teaches all of these things in from a child development perspective. You're focusing on the gross motor skills involved with handwriting before you focus on those fine motor skills. So I see a lot of that in her preschool. They start with those large strokes. And then when I was a literacy coach, my teachers used a program called Handwriting Without Tears, which was very explicit. I think occupational therapists created the program. So very explicitly taught information, and I thought that was a great program. Actually, my sister uses that in her preschool too, but we don't have We don't nearly go into enough detail in any of my classes about this. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

that's interesting, because that's a theme that's emerging. And I'm sure listeners are also thinking about their own, whether that's a parent, whether it's an educator, Administrator, what their own exposure has been to information regarding this important topic too, right, we can all be thinking that, and Lindsay, you were saying something interesting, you have such great experience, and you do so many things to stay up to date on what you should be teaching in the classroom. And listen to help the time it's kind of taken you to cultivate enough of the pieces that you need, and have the confidence to give that explicit direct instruction that Vancleave is saying is so important. And then Stacy, can you imagine, right for these educators that are leaving, at least you're spending some time who knows you could easily leave not spending any time getting instruction about what is correct handwriting, let alone how you should be intervening early and being explicit about what you're telling students. So this I think, is really good just to discuss right here and and think about right for educators. Let's talk a little bit about the second component to this. So VanCleave mentioned the first one letter and word formation, pencil grip and paper positioning must be directly and explicitly taught in practice. Number two, assistive tools, and effective and constructive support and criticism must be directed towards students learning to form letters. So what do we think about his comments there? Number two, assistive tools and effective and constructive support and criticism must be directed towards students learning to form letters. What do we think,

Lindsay Kemeny:

interesting that he uses the word criticism. But we do need to correct them? And say, Oh, nope, not from the bottom watch, I want you to start here at the top curve around close on that Oh, or whatever, you know, and give them the specific directions. And I was just thinking, like, a lot of times, I think, even like, just a long time ago, when I was first teaching, I just kind of thought of handwriting, kind of like what Stacy was saying, were just what it looks like, because we would just do the handwriting books. Here's the handwriting book with like, 10 lines, and you're just like writing the B over and over and over. And now I'm like, oh, no, I want to explicitly tell you how to form this letter, we're going to do it all together. And I just want like three of them. Like, because I don't want you to get I think, you know, if you do having them do it over and over and you're not there with them. They're gonna get into a bad habit of they could be forming it incorrectly, right? So I think less is more with criticism and feedback, like, like he was saying, and that quote, like William was saying, that's, that's good. You

Stacy Hurst:

know, one thing I did notice when I was teaching first grade, and when I learned more about the science behind this, it made sense. But it didn't make sense to me at the time, I would see a student form the same letter a different way every time he wrote it, or not consistently, right. And I'm thinking specifically, with this student, the first time I recognize it was with the lowercase a, sometimes he draw the line first, and then the circle, sometimes you draw the circle and then the line. And that was inconsistent. And turns out that students struggled with his alphabet knowledge makes sense, because he's not really connecting those aspects of print, and of course, the sound that's associated with it, let alone the name of the letters. So I think that is something to watch for. I also wonder about the role technology has played in how or if we instruct on these things, because I know I'm old enough that predate the internet. That my second grade teacher really focused on that. I don't remember the instruction. But every quarter on my report card she had written Stacy is still making her O's backwards. And as an adult, I read that and thought, How do you know it's an O? Right? Like it starts it ends at the same place? How do you know I'm doing it backwards, but she was paying attention. I haven't seen the time I was teaching in the classroom. I haven't seen that level of focus. So that criticism or feedback, what didn't exist, right.

Donell Pons:

I love what both of you are saying because from from different angles, and with a lot of interesting information. It's the care and attention that the individual in the room is giving right to what's happening, and how the student is performing the particular task that tells you so much like from your aspect, Stacy, what the information you gathered Lindsay from the aspect you did, and then when you're giving that explicit instruction again, for a student, there's an opportunity to have conversation around the letter and you may get to a lot of those things like you were saying Stacy that you can figure out from what a student is doing, performing a particular task. Gosh is so great. It's got me thinking about a lot of things. One thing I want to bring to this conversation is working with older Students so middle school high school adult. And I've only ever had one student who came to receive tutoring services who was still continuing to struggle with reading that wrote really well, meaning the penmanship and manuscript looked really good. Typically, there are handwriting errors and which would make sense as this conversation right, as we understand how these two inform each other, that they were struggling with their handwriting. And Lindsay, you're so right about intervening on just the way that you hold the implement, right the device. And I've had to have that conversation so much, I've got a great shpeel, if you will, about how you have the conversation about why we hold it the way that we do. And eventually, it makes sense, it makes a lot of sense to your students, because the one thing that hasn't given them to hold it in these all these different ways, it hasn't given them effortless writing that they can do over time, and take notes and be just fine. It hasn't produced that for them. So they're willing to have that conversation. It's really interesting.

Narrator:

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Donell Pons:

Okay, so let's do number three, these first two have been really interesting. The third key component that he lists his students must develop the ability to assess their own handwriting, students must develop the ability to assess their own handwriting. So what does that look like? I know what that looks like, when they're older. Lindsay, what does that look like in your classroom?

Lindsay Kemeny:

We're doing handwriting lesson and then I'll say I'll show them how to form it, we might form it together. And then I say, Okay, write three lowercase A's, you know, that just reminded me of something really funny at the beginning of the year. Okay, I'll tell that story in a minute. But um, I, I totally lost track of what I was talking about. At the beginning of the year, I'll just tell the story now. I just remember saying showing them how to do the lowercase A and their little first graders. Okay, now you're gonna write three lowercase A's. And it was like, chaos. And I soon realized, oh, my gosh, I can't do that. We've got to do it all together. You know, curve around small down a, go to the next one curve around small down a. We had to do that all together. Okay. And then what I do is I have them go back and look at their three A's. And circle, which one is the best? Which one is your best? A, you know, and I'm walking around and saying, oh, yeah, I agree. Look how nice and plump that one is, you know, and look how beautiful you beautifully you follow the lines and kind of help a little bit so they know what to be looking for. But that's one way they can analyze their own handwriting. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

that's a really good way. I've used that too, and seen that to work well. And then students get into conversations about I almost chose this one. But then I decided on this one, it's really a good way to do that. I'm laughing too. Because just last week, this came up in my one of my courses, and we're tutoring first graders currently. And we were talking about writing and development, that kind of thing. And spelling and that my students had asked what do I do if they spell a word incorrectly? And I said, well, first of all, you want them to notice it right? So draw their attention back to it. And I said, the best way to do that is to have them read their own writing. And so on a very general level, they need to be reading their writing, because that is sometimes when they either notice problems with the way they've spelled a word, or formed the letter to the point that you can't read it. Right. So even in first grade, I've seen that work. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

in fact, that's the one I use with my older students is now remember the activity after this is we're going to read what we've written and then it's like, oh, it looks quite different. Yeah, that's really interesting. Let's move on to number four teachers must set as their goal fluent writing that's number four teachers must set as their goal, fluent writing. So let's talk about what this looks like at different ages, right? And in different classrooms. What's fluent writing when you're first grade in those younger grades K through three. So let's talk a little bit what is your goal,

Lindsay Kemeny:

you definitely want them to develop automaticity with those letters, so that they just know how to form them. And it's easy, they don't have to think about it. So there's really a lot of growth throughout the year. And then something I do I learned about, and I wish I had time I was going to look up because I thought I saw this in a research article, but I can't remember, but I'm prepping this because someone might get like, uncomfortable with this idea. But my students love it. And it takes like a lot of, I don't know, competence, and like really comfortable in the classroom. And I really set this up where we are not competing against anyone except ourselves. But I will time for a minute. And they will write the alphabet in order. And I set the timer and they use their whiteboards. And they will write the alphabet, and then they get so excited for how far they got. And they tried to get further along in the alphabet, you know, as we do it. So okay, maybe we're gonna try it again in a couple days. And you got to, you know, maybe they only got two g because it's like at the beginning of the year, and then maybe the next time they got to k, and we're like, wow, that was awesome. And some of them are like, we I wrote the whole alphabet twice. Amazing. And so they get so excited, they get so excited to try to beat what they got before. And so that's just just measuring, you know how fluent they are writing the alphabet. And of course, that takes alphabet knowledge too, because they, they have to write it in order from memory. Right.

Donell Pons:

So that's great. And Stacy, how about you? What about in that space of teaching teachers? How do you help them have a goal? I mean, if you only had a few minutes to teach on this, are they getting a goal?

Stacy Hurst:

Well, luckily, we do get to talk about it a lot. When we're talking about writing instruction. In general, we do talk about handwriting, probably not enough but and phonics as well. And even if you think of a student writing a sentence, there's a lot they have to hold in their working memory. And if you've ever watched a first grader specifically, in that task, especially the verbal ones that are telling you what they're thinking as they're doing it, and they'll get to a word, and they're writing really pretty fluently. And then they'll say, oh, is a B is that this one or this one, and then they and then they're off track. And then they go back to their sentence, and they've lost it again. I've seen that happen over and over, unless you're doing anchor things like saying, remember, you had four words in your sentence, what was your sentence again, having them repeat it. But being fluent would help eliminate that, right, they've got a lot to think about, too, because they also have to spell things correctly. That requires proper letter formation. So then then we get to the sentence level, then they have to remember how to use the proper syntax. So anything we can do in the early stage to make those letters automatic will help all of those processes. And

Lindsay Kemeny:

I think I read burn injure said or No, maybe it was in that presentation she gave where you're not really working on that. And kindergarten, right care is just the formation and then starting in first grade, you can start a little bit more about automaticity influencing.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, and what you're referring to Lindsay is really great. And we'll put it in the show notes is Dr. Berninger did a series of videos, and they're posted on the Internet, and they are free. And she talks about, you know, evidence based developmentally appropriate writing instruction. So those are really good. And we'll post them in the show notes, because I highly recommend watching those videos and divided them up into time sequences that you can take a short look at something for 20 minutes. Just fantastic. You know, it's interesting, because as both of you are talking about this, what's the goal and how do you get to fluent writing? I had kind of the benefit of and I'm going to reveal to Stacy and I predate the internet as well. I don't think I'm shocking anyone with that. My mother however, she was in that pre World War Two learning cursive first group. And what's interesting is, is because my mother was a school teacher, we would have conversations and I can remember some of those even though my mother passed away a long time ago, I remember having very important and very explicit conversations about handwriting. And handwriting was something that at least her generation, my mother's generation is and this is going back quite a bit. That generation thought a lot of of penmanship. penmanship was very important. It was it was really rather interesting. And there was a lot of emphasis put on it and I remember having my mother having conversations with me as I was learning to print that how important it was to take my time to be careful, and the presentation of how it looked and I remember her giving me some little tips and tricks about you know, using the finger spacing in between Because facing was very important that you do that some of these things that all of us maybe can recall from when we were younger. But I think that is interesting that shift over time in how we view, this very important aspect of literacy. And that is being able to write, it's interesting because I'm going to bring it as we're, I know, we've been at this conversation for a little bit, but maybe try to tag this, there's way too much to tackle in one podcast. So we're trying to, as you can see, touch on a few topics. But there is an aspect of conversation that has come up around the fact that says you kind of touched on it with students that now are coming into the school system, maybe have been on devices, those things that maybe were traditional opportunities that students might have had to be using the motors, you know, larger motor skills to the fine motor skills aren't perhaps happening. And how is that maybe impacting handwriting? And does it matter? Because there's a lot of folks that are in one camp of do we even need to worry about handwriting anymore? And then there's the other camp of Yes, handwriting should always be a part of good instruction with literacy. So that's kind of one of I'm going to drop my last controversial there we go to talk about that is, what are your thoughts on? Have you heard both camps in both aspects of Hey, why are we even bothering with this? We're all going to be online? To Hey, yeah, it's really important. We do need it. And what are your thoughts surrounding that? And who I don't know who wants to go first? Stacy or Lindsay? I don't care.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I'll go ahead. I have a lot of thoughts. They're swimming in my head right now. But one thing is, what I haven't seen in schools as much, is actually teaching keyboarding. So there's another factor there, too, I've seen all kinds of interesting ways that students use a keyboard, two fingers, different keys, different rows, I was explicitly taught how to use the keyboard, and it helps me in certain instances, for sure. I think with my own students, and there is research. In fact, I don't remember this study, I just saw it and saved it. But in this synopsis, it shared that things get in our long term memory faster when we're writing them down as opposed to typing. And recently, I really went over in depth areas, phases of word recognition with my students, and I literally had them all close their laptops, put their phones away, and said, Today, you're going to handwrite these notes. And that was intentional. And I shared with them why, right. So I think there's a lot to that, too, when we're talking about this in general, I think traditionally, handwriting has been taught like everything else we did with instruction or a seemingly that we did in isolation. And I think it's important for us as teachers to know how to connect that, to make those connections between how it impacts reading and comprehension and writing in ways that it's not taught in isolation, you're really doing it intentionally. And with that in mind, you'll notice if it's been effective or not right with that end goal. So I still think we need both. And then, you know, we haven't even brought up teaching cursive, which we don't see as much anymore, either. That was literally created for the human hand. Right? We that was not a technology that existed. So it was created in a way that would be most advantageous to our motor skills. So I know that there's a lot to talk about with that, for sure. Definitely, little kids need to be learning to form those letters.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, I think we'll always need to be hand writing things like always, no matter the technology that comes in, I mean, you're going to you're not going to type a card to someone for their birthday, right. And you're not always going to type your list your shopping list, you might but there's always times that you're just going to jot something down. So I think like handwriting will always be important. But I remember being so frustrated with COVID When school shut down and they're saying do everything online. And I was thinking No, my kids need to write these students need to write and I'm going to take little papers around to their houses. And then yeah, I'll use technology to give a lesson and they're gonna like join me on Zoom or like watch the video or whatever. But they are actually going to write and I'm not going to have them. It was kindergarten that time. I'm not going to have them typing they don't even you know, know how to type yet we need to learn how to write so I think I think it will always be important and to what Stacy was saying about not teaching it in isolation. I think that's a really great point. So I will teach handwriting separately, but then I attend to it like when we're doing in our phonics lesson during dictation of course during writing. And one just simple way to do that is if you have certain language that you use, like these handwriting prompts you use in your handwriting lesson. Like you heard me earlier saying curve around small down a right Well, then let's say in our phonics lesson we have a word with, you know, with a, I'm going to use that same curve around small down a, you know, so that that's going to kind of cue them. Oh, yeah, thinking about that handwriting and just attending to it. So even I love the whiteboards with handwriting lines on them, because then we can be watching their handwriting too. And that's like a whole nother thing is, you get like the lines, like that's a whole nother thing. You have to tell them because there's lines and they just write wherever and then you're like, Wait, look, your letters are flying away, like you need them safely on the ground safely on that line. We got to use the lines correctly.

Stacy Hurst:

So when I was in college, we practiced letter formation. But the main message there was, it needs to be legible, because you're the teacher, right? You need to have a good model of handwriting. It wasn't all of the important reasons, that handwriting connects to literacy in different ways. Lindsay, what were you saying? Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

about the handwriting lines and like the lying away, and like that's a whole nother thing is that you'd have to teach them to use the lines correctly.

Donell Pons:

And I can appreciate the conversation around why it's important to teach how we also have the students form the letters. And Lindsay, you brought it up, we've all talked about it at one point or another. That could be an entire other podcast, trust me definitely write about people's thoughts, but lifting the load of what you're saying, I love how you kept it simple there, Lindsay with your little prompts. The big takeaway too, from a lot of the information is we don't want to make this overcomplicated, right. And that feedback that we give seems to be nice, concise instructional points to make to the student about how they can improve the writing. And then just to kind of wrap up the importance you both commented so well on Should we keep what why do we keep handwriting? Why is it important? Stacy, you made reference to some research studies, I was going to drop some in here but thought you know what, there's so many, you just need to Google the aspect of writing and memory. And you'll get you can go for days on the research that's been done there. And it's important enough. And it's significant enough that a lot of our great computer programming companies not going to name names, when they are coming up with new technologies and interfaces, they have tried to at least one I know for sure has tried to keep it interface with their some sort of scribe or handwriting portion. Because they know that importance of having that particularly for students. So that is that's a whole thing to study as well. And then I just want to leave this one because it to me, it was really a good indicator of how important this skill is and why we do need to teach it well to our students. I have a an individual who has a really good friend who has dyslexia, she is a doctor. And she's a very good doctor. And I'm, I'm so thrilled that she became a doctor. It wasn't an easy route, obviously, because of dyslexia, not an easy route. But one of the things that she says many times when she tells her story about how did you become a doctor, because many people who have dyslexia want to hear that story and others. And she always says the only way I made it through medical school is I literally rewrote my medical books. That's how I was able to take in and retain things because my reading was at a level where it wasn't so great. wasn't all that fluent for me. But I would rewrite everything and that she said was critical. That was the point at which it became mine. And I could remember it and she said if you think I'm joking about rewriting my I have them She's literally rewrote her medical journals. And that she said is what got me through medical school. So this writing piece is so very important.

Stacy Hurst:

Wow. Yeah, that is critical. That's a really good way to sum up why the importance of writing with not only producing what we're thinking, right, but also learning. Donell, I'm just curious. Any other stories? I guess we calling them stories make them seem like they're made up. But any other examples from your particular space about letter formation? I know I've worked with plenty of older students who hate to write frankly, they hate writing by hand. And a lot of that has to do with their early experiences in this space. What do you see with your older students?

Donell Pons:

Yeah, that's, you know, it's an interesting space. And it's an interesting space to be in, where that's what you're doing with an adult. Because when you think about it, you can have interactions with adults all the time and never really know if there is a literacy challenge. But that's the first thing. That's the first conversation I'm having with adults that I've just barely met. So that's that's a really interesting relationship to have with, with adults in this space. But the writing piece is kind of interesting. One of the if you'll typically on this journey, one of the things they'll want right away, if they've really struggled with writing is to be able to sign their name because that has been a challenge on documents. And as an adult, you often have to just casually sign your name to things. And then the other one is How can I write in small boxes for a job. So typically if they're being asked to fill out an application, and you would think because I know a lot of people are gonna say, Oh, you do those all online, you would think so. But I've had it enough where somebody says, I've walked in to ask, Hey, do you have any openings? And they said, Oh yeah, I've got I've got a few openings, just fill this out and hand it to them. And terror strikes, because they know they can't. First of all am I going to spell things correctly, but also, I don't think I can fit it into those tiny boxes, because my handwriting is so poor. So those are some of the thoughts that my students have. And then I we spent a lot of time with getting the right implement to write with and making sure you've had instruction about correct formation and making it simple. Like, you guys were both talking about simple directions for letter formation. And then also visually, seeing someone else write a correct letter. This is Berninger has done a lot with the mind's eye she calls it but seeing someone correctly form letters will just do copywriting we call it copywriting or mirror. When I write they write, and that is also a nice tool for my students and then making sure they're writing onto a piece of of either a whiteboard first, that has the lines on it, because that's another one how many times adult students are expected to write without lines when they still need that support, until they can get to the point where I can't but I mean, I could go on for a long time. But those are just a few of the things.

Stacy Hurst:

Well, thank you for answering that question. This has been a really great topic for conversation and Donell thank you for choosing it. But also as you were just sharing your examples or your experiences with older students. This morning, I was interviewed by one of my students for an assignment, they were asking me about adverse childhood experiences and the impact of literacy on students who experienced those. And of course, we've heard a lot. I love what Dr. Steve Dykstra shares about the importance of being literate, and how that impacts well being. But the conversation turned to this morning to being able to write down thoughts and it for anyone, no matter what you're experiencing, right, just being able to express yourself through writing. So to back way up, it starts with letter formation. Handwriting is very important. And it really does impact every aspect of literacy because you're directly having experiences with those letters as you're forming them. So thank you for a great conversation. You guys, I always learned so much. And thank you all for joining us. And hopefully you'll join us for the next episode of Literacy Talks.

Narrator:

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