Writing/Penmanship

As adults, we rarely stop to think about all the things you need to know just to write a sentence.  It has become second nature to us.  Breaking down the steps, it becomes clear why writing is a challenge for young children.

Here are some of the basic skills that are necessary:
-improving fine motor skills
-forming and correctly using upper and lower case letters
-sounding out words
-increasing the amount of words known by rote
-punctuation

There are numerous ways that writing happens throughout the day. For example, children  use it to record information, label items, recall events, and practice penmanship.  At Summers- Knoll we know that each child is on their own journey of learning.  With writing, as with all activities, teachers create lessons in which children can work on an activity but take it to  various levels according to their abilities and interests.

 

Penmanship
In this blog the focus will be on how handwriting is done in our class.

 Practicing forming letters correctly can be a tedious task. In the past, various handwriting programs have been tried but none of them have been very satisfactory or successful.  Starting last year, I combined handwriting and learning basic phonic rules. This system kept handwriting practice interesting for the children.

This is how it works: 
I choose a letter or letters for the day, for example a short u sound or a letter combination such as "at".  The children brainstorm a list of words that fit the sound pattern. I write them on the board.  After brainstorming session, the children try to use their best handwriting to practice writing the letters and words.  Beginning writers practice writing the words from the board.  More experienced writers put the words in sentences and/or think of their own words that match the pattern.