Not sure whether to be bothered by this...

[PassTheTwiglets]

DD (8yo, Y3) has dreadful handwriting but the content of her work is excellent and she's way above average in that. Her teacher is concerned that her handwriting doesn't match the level of her literacy skills - but they are 2 vastly different skills, surely?! Why do they have to be at the same level? The teacher said "I just don't know what to do about her handwriting" - but she's the (very experienced) teacher, shouldn't it be her job to know what to do or am I expecting too much there? DD hasn't got great coordination, she's not very good at art, both me and DH both had dreadful handwriting as school - tbh I'd be surprised if she did have good handwriting skills! I was also bothered by the fact that the teacher said she looked at some of DDs work and, because the writing was so bad, she expected it to be a poor piece of work but she was then very surprised when the content turned out to be excellent. I don't feel this should have been a surprise either - DD has always excelled in literacy and her teacher should know that she's good at it, so why the surprise? She also had DD placed in the top maths group for ages before realising that she struggles with maths and moved her down a group, which also irritates me. But that's another issue :)

It just seems to me that (a) the teacher should know her class's abilities a bit better and (b) she's placing too much emphasis on handwriting. Of course handwriting is important but they're only 8 - surely they'll get better given time?

Would you be concerned about this? (either about the teacher's attitude or about the bad handwriting!) Do I need to do anything or just ignore it?

Handwriting is a basic method of communication. If hers is illegible, she's not communicating efficiently.
Yes, as a parent I'd be working on it for 10/15 mins a day maximum to help my child, irrespective of any issues I had with the teacher.

It's not illegible, Goblin, it's just not good. Letters are wrong sizes, all same height etc. If she were 11 and still ike it then I'd be bothered but I just thought that 8 is a bit young to be stressing that her writing isn't perfect?

If handwriting were the determining quality, I would certainly never have got my PhD. I have dodgy joints, the reason for which was not explained until I was in my forties. But I am able to hold down a university job with minimal writing by hand. Ds (9) is hardly able to write at all: he was 7 before he was diagnosed with hypermobile joints and that was only because he finally told us that using his hands really hurt- he hadn't realised that wasn't normal. Now the school has agreed that he can use a laptop, though in practice it doesn't really seem to be happening. I am expecting his work to take off in secondary school where more writing is done on a keyboard: I can see a big gap between his level of reasoning and what he gets down on paper.

If there is a physical problem (not saying there is in your case), practice won't necessarily make it better (for me, it just increased my pain levels and made it harder to write legibly), but checking out pencil grip, using a special pencil and some basic strengthening exercises can be helpful.

Cory, this is exactly what I said to her teacher - DH has a PhD and has the worst handwriting in the world!

That's a good thought about checking pencil grip - I hadn't thought of that.

I don't know if it gets all that much better over time unless they are concentrating on making it better tbh My dd had a grip like a demon on her pencil, the skin was almost colourless from exerting pressure. Once they change grip, the writing deteriorates for a bit before it gets better though.

I drew middle lines for dd to get the letters a bit m ore even. Then got her to draw the middle lines with faint pencil herself , then dropped them. All a bit of a drag but IME handwriting doesn't really improve unless you work on it

Actually, I think handwriting is important.

When I was your DD's age, I thought handwriting was the most pointless lesson ever, and that only the prissy girls bothered with it - writing a, a, a, b, b, b.... in music books to get a housepoint didn't seem worth it. I simply read instead - and strangely never got caught.

Roll on to university and I suffered the humiliation of having to dictate my exam scripts to the secretary - at my expense. I was also told that I'd probably received lower marks for other exams because the examiners couldn't decipher my writing.

It's easier to sort out now, than wait until the bad habits are entrenched. Obviously this isn't relevant if there is a physical reason for the poor writing.

But if the writing is legible, surely it should only matter if she has problems writing at the speed expected?

I've always had 'bad' handwriting that people tell me is like a drunk spider or just plain 'ugly', but it's very easy to read. Comparing it to others, I think girls get a rougher ride on this - loads of men I know have similar writing and didn't get stick as children.

Handwriting is important up to a point; if it's difficult for the child, then they do need strategies in place to improve.

As the parent of two able boys with bad handwriting, though, I feel that some (not all) primary school teachers are over-focused on presentation. There frequently seems to be a sense that children with poor writing just aren't making an effort, whereas teachers never think that a child with poor reading skills isn't making an effort; you never hear teachers say "I wish they'd try a bit harder to read well".

And I would be worried if a teacher assumed that poor presentation meant poor content. DS1's Y6 teacher told me that it was a problem with SATs marking; time and again they see neat work with less impressive content marked above untidy work with excellent content (not just the spelling marks, but the content marks). But she herself looked beyond presentation.

Ask the teacher what she's going to do to help your daughter improve her handwriting; does she, for example, use Write from the Start or another fine motor programme? I ended up buying this for both my boys to improve fluency.

I agree that primary teachers focus far too much on presentation and I also think that there is too much emphasis on writing things out in primary school which could be recorded in other ways. But I would be peased that the teacher has identified this as a possbile area of difficulty for your dd. It would be an issue if it affected the speed of her work in exams and also if an examiner who wasn't familiar with her writing style (as her teacher will be) was unable to decipher her work.

If the letters are all the same size it makes it very difficult to read and if not illegible all but ... if you are struggling to read a piece of work you often miss the excellent content I'm afraid .

I agree with all your points

but would add her handwriting won't miraculously improve if you don't make her practice it

and it's much better to practice early rather than later

and yes, she will be marked down for illegibility - such is the nature of the world

so whilst she could get by with terrrible handwriting like you and your DH have and be very intelligent underneath it all why have an unneccessary stumbling block in the way

much easier to make an 8 year old improve than a 13 or 16 year old IMO

I think my ds1 is headed this way. His very intelligent, his reading is getting good, but he's only just (sort of) mastered writing his name and he's 5.5. I would help as much as you can. Read up on the scheme they use at the school and do a little bit of fun practise with her. How about her writing a book, where she does a little bit every day?

It does worry me slightly that you and dh have terrible handwriting and sort of think she may have inherited that (implied). I think the more people think like that about their kids (eg. I was terrible at Maths so at first sign of problems, my dc must be terrible too), the more likely parents are to pigeonhole their kids. I say this because my dh is terrible at this, I'm always trying to tell him our kids are unique, they are not him, and they may have strengths he didn't have and weaknesses he didn't have.

It may be that with a bit more help her writing can improve a lot. MN is a great resource for getting help with specific things that maybe teachers don't have time to individually cater to each child. I posted something about helping ds1 with handwriting and got really helpful advice.

Teacher doesn't sound great, but you get bad and good (as I am learning) and mediocre. She sounds mediocre rather than bad! They do have around 30 kids to teach, all different, with unique needs, both socially and academically, and can't be as 'on top' of each child as the parents would sometimes like.

sounds like letter formation rather than writing tasks

so repeating letters down a page sounds a more worthwhile pursuit rather than writing a story

try here www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/learning/handwriting.shtml

for some tips

oh and this is for the 8 year old not a 5 year old - 5 year old has plenty of time to develop

I would still practice the sequence movements to for letters correctly with a 5 year old but he might find it more fun doing it with a light sabre in the air than filling a sheet with letters - that isn't to say he shouldn't do a few minutes of that too.

My DD was exactly the same in year 2, and I was grateful that her teacher gave her loads of encouragement for the (painstakingly deciphered) content and didn't make too much of the presentation. She gradually improved from year 3 onwards and in year 6 now she has good, clear, cursive handwriting.

Which is probably not very helpful, as I'm not sure what helped her improve, other than maturity, practice and motivation (she's a great self-improver and has spent hours teaching herself to draw - she's not a natural either), but I just wanted to suggest that early poor handwriting isn't necessarily permanent, and that I agree it's important to separate content from presentation (though beyond a certain age, work needs to be easily legible). DD isn't the most confident child, and it was a big thing for her that she carried the message out of year 2 that she was 'good at literacy', as opposed to 'rubbish at handwriting'. (I know this, because the teacher wasn't nearly so sensitive about her maths, and we've all had to work hard at turning round the 'rubbish at maths' attitude.)

'I don't know what to do about....' from a teacher is maddening. My friend had this in year 6 about her son's maths. The friend employed a tutor for a while, but that's hardly a postive teaching strategy (unless it was a hint ).

I think you should try not to take it so personally. The teacher is pointing out one of your daughter's weaknesses. As others have pointed out it can be very difficult if not impossible to change handwriting later on. It would be a good idea to work on it now. I would also agree that whilst people with poor handwriting of course manage it by word processing etc, there are still plenty of occasions where handwriting is important. It is however not always easy to help children with this skill. I did some very intensive work with some y6 children invloving daily work at school and home as well as lots of input of fine motor skills. TBh it did not change things a great deal because the children themselves were not that fussed about their handwriting! If you encourage your dd perhaps you may be more successful.

Well, there has been research at GCSE which proved that examiners assume that poor presentation = lower ability: so whilst they may not actually mark work lower, they will begin looking at it assuming that it is in the lower half of the mark scheme.

I would say, too, that handwriting doesn't generally tend to get better over time (otherwise older doctors would have the most beautiful writing!) - better to try and address it now before she gets used to thinking she's 'bad' at it. Agree with Activate that this will be much easier at 8 than at secondary age.

Thanks for your replies, everyone!

Cansu, I'm not taking it personally at all - I was the one who was worried about her handwriting and I initiated the conversation! I just didn't realise how bothered by it the teacher was and was annoyed that she assumed that DD's work was poor because of it (and that she said she had no idea how to improve it).

I'm really shocked to hear that examiners assume that poor presentation = lower ability! That's really frightening.

activate, thanks for those links; I'll have a read later. I'm not sure about practising - they do handwriting practise at school and she's not too bad when she does that (though not perfect). It's when she writes free-form that she can't do it - I think it's too much for her to concentrate on what she is writing and how to form the letters at the same time. I wonder if her mind whizzes too far ahead, trying to think of what she wants to say, and she doesn't want to have to slow down to think about how she is forming the letters. She writes all the time at home, she constantly has little books and projects on the go.

Pterosaur, that is very encouraging about your DD!

Maybe the teacher can't do much about handwriting because it needs one-to-one attention, and there isn't the time for that in school. I would practise this at home if I were you, making it reasonably fun/giving a reward for effort.

PTT DD also used to slap her ideas on to paper at great length, with very little thought to handwriting or spelling. She is now also a pedantic speller.

She doesn't knock out the stories like she used to though - she's become more of a non-fiction kind of a girl. She does sometimes say that she has to write so many stories to order and to time at school that she's gone off doing them in her own time. Sad if her increased technical proficiency has displaced the (rather batty) creativity. Perhaps she'll find a balance later on.

Maybe the teacher can't do much about handwriting because it needs one-to-one attention, and there isn't the time for that in school.

That's a very fair point but if that's the case I'd expect the teacher to tell me, not to just say "oh I don't know what to do!

I have been told that I have lovely handwriting, but I didn't as a child.
In fact, it was so bad that I had to have handwriting homework, and nobody got homework back then.
My homework was to copy out a paragraph from a book, any book, didn't matter, once a week until my handwriting improved. Which it did.
My reports that year were much better than before, so much so that one teacher wrote that I had been "hiding my light under a bushel". I think she just meant that they couldn't read my work. I passed the 11+ that year too and ended up at the grammar school.
It really is worth gettting your DD to practise her handwriting.

Maybe she genuinely doesn't know what to do about it? Has she told you what strategies she has tried?

OP, yes she should tell you. But maybe teachers get nervous telling parents what to do out of school hours these days - they certainly seem to come in for a lot of criticism when they do if this site is anything to go by.

I was top of the class at school but had terrible handwriting. One time my teacher wouldn't put my work on display for an open day because of it - and I was devastated. So my mum (a teacher) taught me a new method and I practised every night for weeks. Handwriting improved massively, though I still struggle thanks to a habit of holding the pen incorrectly (which nobody seemed to notice throughout my primary years). DD is similar and this thread is making me think that I will investigate how to help her with it myself rather than expecting the school to fix it. purepurple's advice sounds good to me - think I will try it.

It's not just about presentation. To get a level 3 a child has to have joined legible handwriting. Also they need to have fluent, quick handwriting to be able to write enough to get a level 4 (the average level) at the end of KS2. When I was a full time class teacher I was happy to give children handwriting practice to take home. Just ask your dd's teacher for some. If not ask for a handwriting exercise book and give her some yourself. Also have you tried the triangle shaped pencils or pencil grips? i think WHSmith has them. Make sure your dd sits with both feet on the floor, as good posture helps. If she found handwriting easier her pencil will be able to keep up with her ideas better.