[SENco-forum] Handwriting

The most common problem that I found was that students produced "crowded"
pages of writing - regularly spacing out what they wanted to say took second
place to actually getting it down.

Forbid biros from the school - they are designed to make a mark - pens are
designed to make a considered mark - and that is what you are after - oh for
a school who would actually do this - those Biro brothers have a lot to
answer for!

Might I suggest that a normal page of A4 - with 25 lines should hold no more
than 250 words of writing - 8 to 10 words a line is about the right number.

The habit of leaving a line between each paragraph helps too.

Sizing the letters so that they leave some "white space around each word"
needs to be encouraged.

I used to duplicate "pages that I like to read" with a variety of styles -
but the one common factor being that they were legible

Creating a habit of another child marking the work before it is handed in
(in pencil) really tells children if their work is illegible too - students
I have done this with have added some very honest comments about what
someone else has done.

Nearly every child I have ever taught grips their pencil - with the grip of
death - learning to relax their arms - so that they merely have enough
energy to control is an art - and if they can work towards this they will
find that they are able to write for longer too - without that ache
developing.

I invariably demonstrate too what it is like to mark a pile of work - and
how those people who write where you have to strain to read what they are
saying gets popped to the bottom of the pile for when you are feeling
"stronger" - and then you have to mark eight illegible pieces - they can see
how you are less likely to make the most positive of comments.  And then I
ask them how they think an examiner might respond when their GCSE marking
consists of 1000 papers!

The best handwriting motivator we ever had was a local employer - who used
to do this with 350 application forms that the students had filled in before
he came.  (Everyone would have liked to work for him - they finished on
Friday at lunchtime - and sometime had all Fridays off too - you also got
paid a basic wage - regardless of overtime worked until you had done the
basic years hours and then everything was double time - and his employees
loved this - they used to aim to work for double time from October after
starting off in April - but that and his wonderful motivational ideas are
another story).  He would stand before our year 11s - talking to them about
employment - and throwing their application forms into a wastepaper basket
as he went on  talking.  They used to get enraged that he did not read every
word.  He ended up with about 20 forms - he did the same thing again - and
came up with 6 female - and six male - that he would have glanced at - and
he would give every one of those an interview.  He didn't want to know about
anyone who could not produce a neat and attractive CV and application form
in their own handwriting without errors.  And he knew that among those half
dozen there would probably be four people who would suit him very well - and
he wanted to employ the best!

I don't know of any secondary "handwriting scheme" - but writing out a poem
is one thing that I used to ask my classes to do for homework every half
term for our "class anthology" - find a poem - or just a verse or two that
hits you where it counts - and these were read during those odd minutes at
the end of a lesson - and I might add that the most unlikely things caught
their eye - and that they did make the effort for a "public document".

I have had children - heavily bribed by parents - who have "changed their
handwriting" over the Summer holidays - but few and far between.

And my father - in the days of weekly reports of marks gained - had to write
out a chapter of the Bible every day until he came home with 10 out of ten
for handwriting for a term - he was well into the New Testament before that
stopped - and he had the neatest - but most characterless writing that I
have ever seen!  The same thing produced for page after page.

Regards

Ruth

-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Sharon Fawcitt
Sent: 22 July 2007 17:05
To: 'Becta Senco'
Subject: RE: [SENco-forum] Handwriting

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to teach/reteach handwriting as
part of the English curriculum at secondary school.  Our English teachers
are often asking for ideas as to how they can help improve pupils'
handwriting.  I can give them the usual type of handwriting scheme, but has
anyone had any experience of a really successful programme used as part of
whole class secondary teaching?  Or are there some particularly effective
techniques they could usefully learn and pass on to pupils - (short of
suggesting the pupil learns to touch type!)  
Sharon F