To be a bit concerned re ds2’s handwriting?

[cadburyegg]

Ds2 is in y2, just turned 7. Teacher said at parents evening he is really behind with his handwriting. I wasn’t surprised. We do practise handwriting about 3x a week and he writes well when just writing a line of letters, but as soon as he comes to write a sentence it all goes out the window and is barely legible! We have pencil grips which helps and he is hypermobile so struggles a bit. Does anyone have any advice please?

DS(10) has messy handwriting and is on the waiting list for a Dyspraxia assessment (also has other symptoms). When he was younger, before the possibility of dyspraxia was raised, we were told to help build his gross motor skills which in turn helps his fine motor skills - so lots of upper body movements like playgrounds etc.

Have the school assessed him for dyslexia and/or dyspraxia? Will they do that this early? It’s been a long time since I’ve been a teacher but I would have had some concerns seeing this level in y2, though it’s not outside the realms of normal so I wouldn’t panic.

I'm teaching y2 at the moment. It looks as though he's struggling to copy accurately. I would suggest you remove that for now- try dictating short sentences to him instead so he can focus on the handwriting. He can keep his visual focus in what he's writing insfead of having to flick eyes backwards and forwards. Once that is secure, move to copying short sentences.

He would be better writing directly underneath a word or sentence so that he is not losing where he is up to. Writing on top of yellow felt tip or highlighter pen will also help.

A sloped writing desk or wrist band may help. Writing paper with lines and dotted lines will aid letter formation (for correct letter size)

The app Writing Wizard is great for letter formation on a tablet and can be used with a stylus or finger tip. It can be pre populated with names or words. It is multicoloured and uses patterns and rewards. Very popular with children.

Are school giving him opportunities to record using other methods to build confidence where handwriting is not the focus?

I'm a teacher of that age group. It looks good me like he maybe doesn't have good fine motor skills and could do with some activities to build those up to give him more control over the pencil.

As above maybe worth exploring if the staff think there could be something else going on as well as the hyper mobility. What support does he have for the hyper mobility?

Lots of finger disco, drawing and general mark making like drawing shapes and lines will help. But either way he’ll get there, please don’t worry too much ❤️

You said he's hypermobile, my friends child had this problem and you need to get him doing stuff to improve his fine motor control. She got her daughter to play piano to help strengthen her fingers. I'm sure there are other things he could do to help.

Try dough discount videos on you tube.

My dd had even worse hand writing. Struggled with lots of fine motor control things like buttons, puzzles for years. But every year it got better. Currently in y7 and can do perfectly legible cursive now and can do it fast enough to keep up. Try not to worry too much but keep samples of writing each year or every 6 months so you can see I'd it improves. BTW it often does weird things like gets really big for a bit, then really tiny before it goes back to a nice normal size.