CATO - Teachers from Pre-K through fourth grade familiarized themselves Sept. 26 with a new writing curriculum for students called “Handwriting Without Tears.”
Olivia Goldberg / The Citizen
Teachers Amy Murtari, Kiva English and Christine Simmons review materials during a recent training for Handwriting Without Tears, a new handwriting curriculum Cato educators hope holds the key to language development and literacy.
Teachers Amy Murtari, Kiva English and Christine Simmons review materials during a recent training for Handwriting Without Tears, a new handwriting curriculum Cato educators hope holds the key to language development and literacy.
Cato-Meridian Elementary principal Ann Dillon later quipped, “Nobody cried.”
Laugh, but it's not a big leap to make from handwriting to literacy - the sharpening focus of steadfast educators in today's accelerating global world. Increasingly, young people stand to compete with far broader numbers of their peers for jobs, and skilled workers stand a bigger shot at employment in an economy ever-shifting toward high technology, telecommunication and software: a knowledge economy, as it's called. Those same skilled workers are also a lot less likely to stay trapped in poverty: feared to be the overwhelming fate of those who emerge from their academic lives with anything less than a high school diploma.
Preparing students from the get-go, educators say, is the key to bracing children for tomorrow's real-world demands, and the educational map seems to be dotted with schools attacking that premise through the tools that sharpen children's mastery of self-expression. Enter “Handwriting Without Tears.”
The award-winning curriculum, developed by an occupational therapist in Maryland, seems to be getting a warm reception from educators all over the country who have concluded handwriting is a central component of language development, integral to achieving overall literacy.
And literacy, as Dillon put it, is not just about reading.
“It's (about) listening, speaking and writing ... and when you can open up those areas for children, then the likelihood of their
success in literacy will grow.”
To that end, Melissa Brown, Amy Murtari and Kiva English found themselves puzzling out curved and straight wooden pieces Sept. 25, poring over teaching guides and singing along to a CD that accompanied the “Handwriting Without Tears” curriculum. It's no accident the repetitive jingles these teachers began imbuing to kindergarten and pre-kindergarten children this month resemble tunes with which kids already may be familiar. The song, “Where do You Start Your Letters,” for example, is sung to the tune of “If You're Happy and You Know It:”
Where do you start your letters? At the top!
Where do you start your letters? At the top!
If you're gonna start a letter
Then you'd better, better, better
Remember to start it at the top!
Such ditties, along with work books, wooden pieces, individual slate chalkboards and clay “snakes” - which young children use to form shapes - are geared to help 4 and 5-year-olds learn the basic sizes and shapes of each letter, and to address poor handwriting habits (like starting letters at the bottom) early on.
“It's more fun,” said Amy Murtari, who teaches pre-kindergarten. Recalling the tedium she experienced as a third-grader of practicing letters repeatedly for sustained periods, Murtari said the current curriculum offers more variety and stimulation.
“They think they're playing; we think we're teaching,” she said.
School faculty had identified problems in handwriting two years ago, and searched among research-proven programs to address the singular problem of handwriting, from which they'd traced the root cause of perceived difficulties students had expressing themselves.
“What's happening in the mind gets translated through the pencil,” said Dillon, noting that poor handwriting habits can lead to writer's block and, conversely, reader's block. The fact that an occupational therapist generated “Handwriting Without Tears” lent the program a credibility others seemed to lack. While Murtari and her colleagues deferred to child development experts on the subject, they have born witness to children who seem to need more help than others to hold pencils, crayons or scissors.
“They can't put one finger at a time toward the thumb,” Murtari said. With their fingers working together instead of apart, children wind up using their whole hands to hold a crayon. Something as seemingly inconsequential as an immature grasp, she added, can lead to difficulty early on as students fall behind in handwriting. For children who fall behind, writing becomes nothing more than an ill-tolerated chore.
“That's when you see the head on the desk and the shoulders slump,” Murtari said. “They become tired, because their trunk is not strong.”
“Occupational therapists know the fine motor business better than we do,” Melissa Brown said.
Instilling basic premises for handwriting through song, and getting younger children to work with materials like letter shapes and clay to help them form letters, can help bring a classroom up to speed - or so teachers are betting.
At the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten levels, children will learn only capital letters. Printing in lower-case is emphasized in the first grade, while students wait until second grade to learn smaller-sized printing for sentences and paragraphs. Third graders will learn cursive handwriting skills and the basics of connecting letters to one another, while fourth graders will advance their cursive handwriting skills. Higher grades will also focus on keyboarding skills, to help them keep pace with peers in a techno-savvy world.
Staff writer Olivia Goldberg can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 235 or at olivia.goldberg@lee.net
Laugh, but it's not a big leap to make from handwriting to literacy - the sharpening focus of steadfast educators in today's accelerating global world. Increasingly, young people stand to compete with far broader numbers of their peers for jobs, and skilled workers stand a bigger shot at employment in an economy ever-shifting toward high technology, telecommunication and software: a knowledge economy, as it's called. Those same skilled workers are also a lot less likely to stay trapped in poverty: feared to be the overwhelming fate of those who emerge from their academic lives with anything less than a high school diploma.
Preparing students from the get-go, educators say, is the key to bracing children for tomorrow's real-world demands, and the educational map seems to be dotted with schools attacking that premise through the tools that sharpen children's mastery of self-expression. Enter “Handwriting Without Tears.”
The award-winning curriculum, developed by an occupational therapist in Maryland, seems to be getting a warm reception from educators all over the country who have concluded handwriting is a central component of language development, integral to achieving overall literacy.
And literacy, as Dillon put it, is not just about reading.
“It's (about) listening, speaking and writing ... and when you can open up those areas for children, then the likelihood of their
success in literacy will grow.”
To that end, Melissa Brown, Amy Murtari and Kiva English found themselves puzzling out curved and straight wooden pieces Sept. 25, poring over teaching guides and singing along to a CD that accompanied the “Handwriting Without Tears” curriculum. It's no accident the repetitive jingles these teachers began imbuing to kindergarten and pre-kindergarten children this month resemble tunes with which kids already may be familiar. The song, “Where do You Start Your Letters,” for example, is sung to the tune of “If You're Happy and You Know It:”
Where do you start your letters? At the top!
Where do you start your letters? At the top!
If you're gonna start a letter
Then you'd better, better, better
Remember to start it at the top!
Such ditties, along with work books, wooden pieces, individual slate chalkboards and clay “snakes” - which young children use to form shapes - are geared to help 4 and 5-year-olds learn the basic sizes and shapes of each letter, and to address poor handwriting habits (like starting letters at the bottom) early on.
“It's more fun,” said Amy Murtari, who teaches pre-kindergarten. Recalling the tedium she experienced as a third-grader of practicing letters repeatedly for sustained periods, Murtari said the current curriculum offers more variety and stimulation.
“They think they're playing; we think we're teaching,” she said.
School faculty had identified problems in handwriting two years ago, and searched among research-proven programs to address the singular problem of handwriting, from which they'd traced the root cause of perceived difficulties students had expressing themselves.
“What's happening in the mind gets translated through the pencil,” said Dillon, noting that poor handwriting habits can lead to writer's block and, conversely, reader's block. The fact that an occupational therapist generated “Handwriting Without Tears” lent the program a credibility others seemed to lack. While Murtari and her colleagues deferred to child development experts on the subject, they have born witness to children who seem to need more help than others to hold pencils, crayons or scissors.
“They can't put one finger at a time toward the thumb,” Murtari said. With their fingers working together instead of apart, children wind up using their whole hands to hold a crayon. Something as seemingly inconsequential as an immature grasp, she added, can lead to difficulty early on as students fall behind in handwriting. For children who fall behind, writing becomes nothing more than an ill-tolerated chore.
“That's when you see the head on the desk and the shoulders slump,” Murtari said. “They become tired, because their trunk is not strong.”
“Occupational therapists know the fine motor business better than we do,” Melissa Brown said.
Instilling basic premises for handwriting through song, and getting younger children to work with materials like letter shapes and clay to help them form letters, can help bring a classroom up to speed - or so teachers are betting.
At the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten levels, children will learn only capital letters. Printing in lower-case is emphasized in the first grade, while students wait until second grade to learn smaller-sized printing for sentences and paragraphs. Third graders will learn cursive handwriting skills and the basics of connecting letters to one another, while fourth graders will advance their cursive handwriting skills. Higher grades will also focus on keyboarding skills, to help them keep pace with peers in a techno-savvy world.
Staff writer Olivia Goldberg can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 235 or at olivia.goldberg@lee.net
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