[senco-forum] Handwriting

(Delete if you don't want to read a reminisce.)

Gosh, Brendan - you could have been at the same school that I
went to.
Ruler over the knuckles every time I picked up the damn stylus
with my left hand (yes, slate boards - remember them?) 

Mercifully, Junior school was a little more enlightened and
allowed me to write left handed. However, the Juniors, being
"modern" relative to the infants, had got ink rather than slate &
stylus, and with the equipment you describe left handers tended
to be recognisable by their ink stains from left handed flicks of
the nib!

In some ways we HAVE made progress this last half-century. I
would like to think that today's left-handed dyspraxics have a
relatively more enlightened environment even if there is further
to go down that route.

Now I look at interactive touch screens complete with
"handwriting recognition" cells etc, and just wonder what will be
around by the time current 5 year olds are my age.

Lois Addy helped a little, but for me it proved rather more
difficult to change one's handwriting after the age of 40 or so.

Rik

-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of
kngbrndn at aol.com
Sent: 06 March 2007 10:43
To: SEN at tringham.net; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Handwriting

When I was at school in the 50's -- we used to spend an hour
lesson a day on handwriting practice. We all had to conform to a
very ridgid set of rules. Our teachers were not gifted inspirers
of wisdom and knowledge -- but they could all write on the
blackboard in chalk with perfect model cursive script.

Older folk will remember the specially lined paper -- so that the
height of the t's were below the height of the looped letters,
and all high letters were of regular height. Also the up slope of
the loop had to be a very precise straight-up angle and all loops
perfectly executed and similarly formed -- and even the dot of
the i had to be of precisely the same height as the t. The
roundness of the a's and b's, etc., had to be perfectly regular
-- everyone was supposed to produce perfectly cloned copper-plate
script -- so that no one's writing was distinguishable from one
another.

Problem was (despite the impossibility of this to many
youngsters) we had very poor quality paper in our copybooks, and
we wrote with school-made powdered watered-down ink, with pens
who's nibs were ruined from being used as darts. So it was like
writing on blotting paper with a couple of tightly crossed pieces
of scratchy fine-wire. Ink-wells used to be plugged with blotting
paper by wags, just to make the writing task a complete
nightmare. The blotting paper transfered in little blobs onto the
page smearing all attempts at writing into an illegible set of
smears.

We were just getting around to buying our own biro's -- but these
were banned as an abomination and a 'devils-tool' to encourage
sloppy (though speedy and legible!) writing.

Some rich kids were allowed to use very expensive and prized gold
tipped nibbed fountain pens, filled with parent supplied
Watermans (or Stevens) fountain pen ink. So these half dozen
produced the fine copper plate style of the teacher -- in parent
supplied excercise books with quality writing paper, purchased
from Smiths. 

It was their work that was pinned on the wall for the inspection
of HMI, the visiting priest and the rich kids influential
parents. Our efforts were usually in the bin (page roughly torn
out) at the end of each lesson.

The teachers did encourage our best efforts -- but this was by
hitting us sharply over the knuckles with a rule, as we struggled
to write, if they considered we were not conforming with the
blackboard copper-plate script we were copying out. This numbed
our writing fingers and made any dexterity and nimbleness in
respect of dexterous wrting impossible

A nightmare and a waste of time -- as we all developed our own
styles in our private ball point writing to each other -- and as
soon as we left school. We loved developing our own style of
sloping tiny writing (frowned upon from up on high) and rebelling
against the teacher tyranny just for the sake of rebelling.

Bring back the good old days (I say) of hours of handwriting
practice, endless pages of timed dictation, spelling tests and
the cane for any lack of ability to achieve the teachers
impossibly set tasks.
Brendan King 

-----Original Message-----
From: SEN at tringham.net
To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Sent: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 8.19AM
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] Handwriting

Handwriting is not really addressed by the NC other than to say
that it should be cursive by Year 4.

Teachers are now rated at NO. 1 for poor handwriting pushing
doctors to the NO 2 spot, and unlikely to be making handwriting a
priority ( and where in the timetable exactly(!)

It is not just legibility that is at issue but also speed.  Does
child x only produce 1/2 a page because he is a poor descriptive
writer or because he has poor procioceptor feedback, motor
difficulties or dysgraphia?
Without testing writing speed for the whole class periodically
how can you know.

Recent Y4 whole class speed test found that many were writing in
the bottom 20% speed wise and were not necessarily the children
that might have been expected to have 'problems'.  It is an area
that has been overlooked for too long.

The collection of primarily Primary writing speed tests that I
have found are still up for grabs.  Secondary speed test
available online at PATOSS.

Sharon Tringham

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