Keep those pencils sharpened! | Integrated Learning Therapy

Some of us groan at the memory of those schooldays when we had to practice our handwriting because producing neat letters wasn’t easy. It still isn’t for many – and for many others, our handwriting has deteriorated due to lack of practice. And many of our children hardly have to worry about handwriting any more. So do we encourage it or not?

Anabela Malpique, Deborah Pasternak and Susan Ledger have researched this question and find that youngsters need to be able to write with paper and pen as well as learning to type on a keyboard.

Their research

In a study published last month, they involved 544 children from 17 primary schools in Perth, Western Australia. They assessed how easily students wrote stories using paper and pencil compared to writing stories using a laptop. they found they produced longer and higher-quality handwritten texts. This was based on ten criteria, including ideas, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation.

These findings echoed their earlier study, completed in December 2023 where they did a meta-analysis of studies published between 2000–2022. These compared the effects of writing by hand or keyboard on primary students’ writing.

They looked at 22 international studies involving 6,168 participants from across different countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other non-native English-speaking countries, such as Germany and Portugal.

Their analysis showed primary students produce higher quality texts using paper and pen or pencil than when using a keyboard.

Why does handwriting produce better quality texts?

In most countries children are taught to write by hand before learning to type. Studies show that teaching handwriting in the first years of schooling is connected to improved spelling and greater capacity to write well and quickly in primary and later years of schooling.

Other studies show that using handwriting to create texts (such as notes) promotes our capacity to learn and memorize information.

Of course, in our current age, it is important for children to be able to use a keyboard too. They will need to use keyboards to write for study, work and life as they get older. This process needs to become automatic so they can concentrate on the content of what they are writing.

Research has also shown that when young children struggle with neat handwriting or typing, they may often avoid writing altogether, so both fluid handwriting and competent keyboard skills are important.

Handwriting or typing – which comes first?

While students ultimately need to be able to write both on paper and using digital devices, there are unanswered questions about the order in which handwriting and typing should be taught or whether they should be taught together.

We also don’t yet know if it matters whether students are learning to write via keyboards, touch typing on tablets or by using stylus pens (devices that look like pencils and write via screens).

More research is needed to support teachers, students and families.

How to help your child

Despite these unknowns, there are many things we can do to help children learn how to write on paper and using a keyboard. These include:

dedicating time for practice: teachers can build regular times in class to write and send home small tasks (such as writing a shopping list, finishing a story or describing a monster)
joining in: instead of “policing” your child’s writing, show them what you write in your everyday life. As you write, you can talk about what you will write (planning) and you can share ideas about how you can make your writing clearer or more exciting.
talk about your mistakes and find ways of correcting your writing: when adults talk about their errors or doubts, they make them a natural part of the process.
ask children to read what they have written: this provides opportunities for correction and celebration. Praise children’s bold attempts such as using new words or experimenting with expressions.
give children choice: this gives children some control. For example, they can choose a topic, they can mix art and letters or they can choose paper or keyboard.
display their writing: make children’s writing visible on your walls or fridge or as wallpapers on your devices to instil a sense a pride in what they have done.

Provided by The Conversation

Image supplied by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.