Handwriting- what would you do?

[maybenextyear]

Hi,
Below is a photo of my 8 year old's writing. Handwriting is not an area of expertise for me and I'm wondering the best way to go about helping him. His school have taught cursive from Reception (goodness knows why). His writing is quite often illegible, some joins are incorrect, not on the line, ascenders/descenders too short etc. What should my next steps be? Take him back to pre cursive? Focus on fine motor skills / strength? Can anyone recommend good resources to use?

Thank you!

Should point out that this is a short piece of writing, when he writes longer pieces it is almost all illegible and I really have to focus on deciphering what he's trying to say.
Practical resources I've thought about chubby triangular pencils, weighted wristband and writing slopes. Am wondering if there is a scheme or handwriting intervention anyone would recommend?

I would liaise with his teacher and ask how you can best support him at home, as well as asking if there is any assistance available through school.

Thanks but unfortunately teacher doesn't think there is a problem, she just says 'he will get there, he is trying really hard' and that lots of the other Y3 boys are the same. School isn't putting anything in place so I want to help him at home. I'm a primary teacher too and I know that he is way behind what would be 'average' Y3 handwriting in our school. Unfortunately I'm used to upper KS2 children who come to me with developed handwriting styles or more recently I'm EYFS where we don't teach cursive.

I have the same problem with my Year 2 daughter. I'm also a primary teacher by trade, but left about 10 years ago. We never taught joined up until a child was competent. I swear it's this obsession with joined up which is causing the problem.

I'm about to see the school and insist that she simply prints until she is neat and legible.

We had this problem all through primary school with ds who is now 12.
We tried lots of exercises to improve his fine motor control . The book "speed up "(?) Helped a bit.
Tbh it remained illegible until year 7 when a teacher took him to one side and told him he didn't have to do cursive if he didn't want to. And now in year 8 he mainly prints but his work is far neater but you can actually read it. Secondary school are far less bothered by cursive than primary school!

Completely agree @CoastalWave, he's been forced to join way too early in my opinion.
I was also wondering about taking him 'back' to pre cursive - not sure whether printing would be helpful for him or not as he wasn't taught it in the first place. Good luck with your daughter x

That's interesting @fedup2017, maybe my son needs to just do what's comfortable.

I absolutely agree about cursive writing, my son (now year 2) was semi legible until school started encouraging it and now it is basically looks like gibberish. I made a fuss at parents evening and they've agreed now he can print them and focus on forming his letters properly again.

Do you know what resources are used at school? As a child I used the Nelson scheme, which is still available (but probably updated!), and handwriting jotters.

My girl is the same! I'm used to be a teacher and taught her pre cursive before she went to school. Since then though, her handwriting is completely illegible unless I'm sat next to her, coaching every letter form. Her handwriting was better at 2.5 than it is now at 6!!

At his age I would go for a scheme that breaks down each letter into movements. Don't faff about with multi sensory gubbins, the evidence is it's good for smaller children but not this age.
I would start again with print, yes, the two schemes I know of are Penpals and Handwriting without Tears. We got the books for HWT from Ireland and the Grade 1 book goes over all the print, at his age he should rattle through it. Then the book for Grade 2 has an additional cursive book.

How is he holding the pen?
Looks to me like sometimes he's putting too much pressure on it.
Can you make an appt with an OT and ask them to look at his hand praxis and fine motor skills, he may be hypermobile. OT's can suggest exercises and different pen/pencil grips.

Does he struggle to hold cutlery? If so, try the childrens size KuraCare range.

My son struggled with handwriting all through school to the point where he was assessed as needing a scribe for some GCSEs. In my experience, primary school were very unconcerned which meant I also did not take on board that there was a significant problem until he was starting secondary school by which time his writing was so poor it really wasn’t adequate for properly engaging with the secondary school curriculum.

Looking back, one of the reasons that it slipped under the radar at primary school is that there are so many alternatives to writing these days - he word processed some work, lots of work that in my day would have been written down they now do on tablets or computers. He sometimes had work at primary school that he could complete by making an animation etc. This meant that he could get away with practicing writing much less that would have been the case a generation ago.

Another consequence of poor writing that seems to be ignored at primary school is the affect it has on learning to spell - an area where my son also struggled. If your writing is poor, the words never look like the printed words even when they are spelt correctly. This removes an element of feedback when writing that makes it much harder to pick up when you have correctly or incorrectly spelt a word. I will also say that my son had these difficulties despite having passed screening tests for dyslexia on a number of occasions. He also plays musical instruments to a high level - his fine motor skill in areas other than writing have always seemed fine. The issue seemed to be very specifically poor hand writing.

By the time I had realised how much of a problem he was having he was at secondary school and was really too old for most of the intervention schemes to work. We did have some success with Speed Up! www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1855033860/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_0Jr5DbYCKV8CE?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

We had the same problem that you do that he was taught cursive right from the start so there was never any printing that the could revert to to increase legibility. If I could wind back time I would have ignored how unconcerned his teachers were a primary and started some kind on intervention at home much sooner.

To be fair, many adults wrote like that. I would start with figuring out whether it’s his hand writhing in particular or just writing in general that is the issue. Our son has impeccable letter formation when he’s doing handwriting type tasks but seems to loose all ability to write legibly when doing general writing tasks.

Teacher here- schools sometimes teach cursive straight away as it is expected by the end of year 2 so they need to set it in quickly. However,luckily, mine is not one of them. We quickly realised if they can't print the letters normally the cursive fails miserably.

From quickly looking, he needs to be taught a v join. For example in the word 'love' that this join goes straight to the top of the next letter. That will be a quick fix for that issue. Tbh I have seen way way worse and I don't think it will take your boy long, bless him.

His main issue is his descenders and ascenders. They need to be taller/lower. I would buy a handwriting book with 4 lines,
usually red lines in the middle for letters to rest on and a line at the top and bottom for the ascenders and descenders. Thus will teach him the correct size. Please reply if that doesn't make sense.

It is really worrying me from recent posts how incompetent some teachers seem.... although I am on mat leave currently and may have forgotten how stretched the job is.

I remember being taught "handwriting" at school (back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) and there was a lot of practising patterns rather than writing words. I wonder if this would help with the writing as he won't have to concentrate on the words at the same time but the movements will become easier.

If you want some easy activities/booklet this one looks good and shows the lines I posted about (apart from they are not red)

I can just about read it - something to do with forest schools on Friday and needing water, a coat and gloves.

Part of the problem I think is that they're starting with the lead-in lines that give some children the false idea that all letters start from the line regardless of what came before it.

I would take 10 minutes every day after school practising letter formation with no lead in lines, only the lead out lines. Group the letters according to their formation rather than the alphabet (e.g. a, c, d, g, o, q all start like a c; b, h, k, m, n, r all have a stick and then go over a bridge; i, j, l, are all sticks) and start off demonstrating how to form each letter step-by-step before letting your child have a go. Make sure he's sitting properly, make sure he's holding the pencil properly using his frog legs (get a triangle one of it helps) and maybe an angled writing support.

My 8 y old ds has difficulty with handwriting and we're focusing solely on letter formation and with these steps he's slowly improving.

Lots of great advice, thanks all! I'll buy one of those 4 line books and focus on individual letters with lead outs but not lead ins - his 'o's look just like 'a's as he's trying to join from the bottom. Thanks @TheElfFellOffTheShelf for taking the time to post the letter groups for me
Ten points for anyone who managed to decipher what he was trying to say:

'We have (but he's joined the first two words) forest school tomorrow (on Friday). I will need wellies, waterproofs, coat, gloves.'

At least that's what I think he's trying to say

It looks like my 8yo's handwriting. He has poor fine motor skills. Drawing and Lego have helped.

I agree with BlankTimes - how does he hold his pen? Does a 4th finger creep into play when he's tired/ been writing a while? Does he press too hard?

Attached is my 8 year old's writing - it's in German so obviously that makes it harder to read for non German speakers obviously, but it's triggered a full assessment process and meanwhile a referral for 20 occupational therapy sessions here... He also finds writing for extended periods painful and is slower than most of his classmates, he brings his ring finger into the pen once he's been writing a while even though he starts with a fairly good pencil grip, and it's holding him back.

The attached piece of work was graded as a 5, with 1 being the best and 6 the worst possible grade (a grade E on an A-F scale in old money).

That looks like my 7year old's handwriting when he does it joined up, at school he doesn't join up yet and it's perfectly legible when not joined. Could he practise his letter formation at home (we bought a huge pack of pixar postcards over the summer and tried to send one a day - poor grandma got most of them!). His writing improved alot. Still not perfect but getting there.

I think Penpals uses those letter groups too.

I have seen quite a few cases of very poor handwriting among children who were moved to cursive very early.

My other bugbear is that kids use it to mask spelling issues--if you don't know a word, just make your writing a bit scribbly and the teacher probably won't notice. This means you (the parent or teacher) don't get feedback about which patterns the child need to practice. It also becomes an engrained habit in the child after a while.

Also, what a PP said about the disconnect between the printed and written word. As children enter the free-reader stage, they start doing that thing of "I'm not sure how to spell this word, so I'll try it out on my notebook a couple of ways and see which way looks 'right'" Smart tactic. Except that it does not work very well if they are writing in cursive, as the word looks so different!

It's worthwhile developing a neat, working print style as well as a good cursive style. Apart from anything else, people in some countries do not learn cursive, so you will need to print if you want to write anything handwritten that people from various countries will definitely be able to read.

If you need to move back to print or semi-cursive for a while, you might need to have a discussion with the teacher and be a little bit assertive (but polite, of course) about it. "We think we need to move back to print and develop a neat print style. We will move back to cursive when spelling and handwriting have improved." My daughter went to a school that taught cursive from age 5. It was too soon for her. Instead, we did those "semi-cursive" letters with lead-ins and lead-outs ("flicks") and I said very explicitly to the teacher, "I am sorry, but I am afraid I am going to do it this way with my daughter for the moment and will not be getting her to switch to full cursive until she is ready--trying to make her join right now is causing her stress, which isn't OK."

OP, one thing that might help is copying. Like, literally get a book out, read it through together, then copy it in neat handwriting. If he does not need to think about spelling or content at all, he can focus fully on just the handwriting bit. He can then start slowly working on applying his skills to his independent writing.

My son wrote like that as a child and still does as an adult. Luckily as an adult his awful handwriting doesn't matter but I'm sure he lost marks in exams because of it.

I think the biggest problem with my son was that it didn't matter to him if he wrote badly. He preferred to write quickly rather than carefully. Do you think that is your sons problem too?