Saving the ABC’s for Generation Z

To become proficient writers, students need to know how to handwrite. Although technology is becoming more accessible in higher grades, students in lower grades still depend on pencil-and-paper for written communication. To handwrite, they need to know how to make their letters, and where the letters go on the writing line. Once handwriting is mastered, students can then focus on expressing and organizing their ideas. While some students can learn to write by merely observing their teacher modeling correct writing and by being provided with opportunities to write, the majority of students still require explicit instruction to learn this skill.

In the last few years, rigorous curriculum demands have caused handwriting to be bypassed. Some of the unfortunate outcomes of this are:

• students are struggling with basic writing tasks
• students grades are suffering due to illegible writing
• children with poor handwriting are experiencing poor self-esteem
• early readers who benefit from kinesthetic learning may struggle to learn to read since writing letters by hand significantly improves letter recognition
• there is a significant increase in referrals to occupational therapists for handwriting difficulties

And, of course, typing comes with its own set of issues:

• students who use technology are significantly more distracted and off-task
• students who type their notes learn less and show less ability to synthesize and generalize information

Understanding that explicit handwriting instruction is fundamental, the Handwriting Heroes method is designed to solve the most common obstacles that teachers face:

OBSTACLE: Students complain that handwriting practice is boring.

SOLUTION: Handwriting Heroes uses humor, storytelling, and animations to make learning letters memorable. Even young learners can easily recall how to form letters because of the strong associations made when they see the relatable characters, hear the witty stories and follow along with the letters’ movements.

OBSTACLE: Teachers do not know how to teach handwriting.

SOLUTION: Handwriting Heroes can turn even the most timid teacher into a handwriting expert. The instructional videos and teacher guides provide easy to follow directions. Moreover, the video animations and the iPad app present all the letter stories, each group’s song, and guided multisensory activities in a step-by-step format.

OBSTACLE: Teachers do not have the time to teach handwriting.

SOLUTION: Grouping letters by their first stroke increases the speed and efficiency of learning the letters. The entire lowercase alphabet is taught in just five weeks! Then, students work to improve lowercase fluency through targeted practice for several months. Once they have mastered lowercase, uppercase is formally introduced.  By six months, students can write their upper and lowercase letters.

Your 90-minute per week time-investment is sure to be repaid in spades – by happy, confident, capable writers!