Between the Lines

Students who struggle with their handwriting find the act of writing not just difficult, but also unrewarding. Because handwriting is a physical as well as a cognitive skill, children’s struggles will likely carry over to other motor tasks including coloring, drawing, cutting, letter formation, and sentence writing. If these students don’t get help early, their problems will escalate and they will fall far behind their peers. Their academic future could be at risk.

Occupational Therapist Angela Kalman, who runs The Play Center in Boca Raton, Florida, reports that 90 percent of the students she sees are in general education and need help with everything from fine motor to gross motor, to visual perception skills. “The most common problems I’m called to remediate are pencil grip and letter formation.”

Unfortunately, it’s very easy for such problems to go unnoticed until it’s too late. “Many of the kids I see would not need me if the proper tools had been in place,” Kalman said.

A Whole Class Solution
Teachers and specialists agree that early identification and intervention could save time and money and help more children meet performance standards. The Screener of Handwriting Proficiency, based on the Response to Intervention (RtI) model, is now helping teachers identify at-risk students for intervention before the problem requires resources outside the classroom.

“Prior to the Screener, there was a lack of a quantifiable way to assess a whole class and provide measurable results to teachers and parents,” Kalman said. “The Screener provides baseline data. I can reproduce results and show the progress I’ve made with students.”

Amy Rossano, an occupational therapist working in the New Jersey public school system, had a similar experience when she recently administered the Screener in a New Jersey private school kindergarten.

“The teacher was pleased with the results and liked the monitoring capability of the Screener, which allowed her to see how much her students have learned. Her only regret was that she didn’t have access to the Screener at the start of the school year,” Rossano said. The class will be screened again at the end of the school year so that the teacher can see how much her class has progressed.

Remediation Strategies for Common Problems
In this case, the initial screening revealed a weakness with reversals, so Rossano offered in-class exercises to help students improve orientation. She suggested that students work with Wood Pieces and other manipulatives for experiential learning. She also had them doing Air Writing and other exercises before moving to paper and pencil.

Kalman too is eager to share the Screener and, based on her findings, offer strategies that teachers can incorporate in handwriting lessons for the whole class.

Because grip and formation are such big concerns, she suggests small manipulative work during center time to help children overcome weakness in their hands. For problems with gross motor function and letter formation, she suggests activities that incorporate large movement. For example, Kalman will get students to build a large D on the floor and then walk through that D. Kalman also uses other multisensory tools including Wood Pieces to teach formation and correct reversals. “I find many ways to replicate a skill and give kids time to practice without a pencil,” she said.

When used with a good handwriting curriculum, the Screener can be part of an integrated approach to handwriting instruction and remediation. “It provides online scoring, classifies results, enables reporting, and keeps class results together. It’s a quick way to screen that will make a huge difference for teachers and specialists,” Kalman explained.

Because the Screener is a Tier 1 assessment for the whole class, teachers get the best results when they can administer at the start, middle, and end of the school year to track student progress. Therapists working with a teacher use the Screener to determine who needs more individual attention.

Failure in school is expensive on many levels. The best solution for schools, districts, educators, and especially children is early screening, progress monitoring, and intervention when needed. Early screening also allows teachers to identify issues and bring in a specialist sooner in cases where they need extra help. It also gives children a chance to build physical and other skills that are crucial for handwriting.

To learn more about how you can use the Screener in your classroom or in your practice, go online and try it out at www.hwtears.com/screener.