Child's handwriting is not improving

[Cazzabeanie]

So my child is one of the youngest in his year (just started year 3). Last year at school was a bit of a mess with 4 different teachers, one of them said his reading needed to improve. Spent hours on the reading and focusing on improvements, his end of Year 2 report said he was meeting the required standards for reading and writing so was thankful and thought we had pulled it back.

Now in year 3 we have proper homework, he has some quiz thing to do about books and the ones we've been issued are very basic, think along the lines of "The cow says moo". We are reading The Twits as our evening book so I was somewhat taken back to see they think his reading level is about the age of a Reception standard for homework.

They've also issued proper writing homework for the first time and now I'm seeing just how poor his writing is, photo attached. To date we've really been concentrating on the reading and his spellings as that was what was flagged, (maybe my fault that I didn't have him writing sentences and only his spellings before but we are where we are). I've asked him to say the alphabet and he can't get it right. The spellings are dire, the capital and lower case letters are all over the place, no finger spaces between words, it's not very legible and he's 7.

Does anyone know if this is the standard of a 7 year old? Does anyone have any advice to get this sorted. I've currently got him writing lines endlessly which isn't much fun and I don't want to scare him away from writing. However I feel I have to do some kind of drastic action to turn this around. Any advice would be appreciated.

Looks ok to me- nice and neat. Maybe try lined paper rather than squares (or draw a bolder line on the part he should write)

This was the level of writing for my daughter at the start of Year 1 and she was working at expected level.

Two different spellings for the same word in the same sentence would make me suspect dyslexia.

I would say this is working below expected level for the start of Year 3.

That's quite poor for the start of year 3, although the letter formation looks ok. My suggestion would be : 1. Look up lists of year 1and 2 common exception words. 2. Do dictated sentences with these a few words in each time from this list. The advantage of doing dictated sentences is that he can focus on the skills of transcription I.e. spelling and handwriting, rather than coming up with ideas.

It’s legible and the words are mostly phonetically plausible. I think you are being harsh. I’m a primary teacher and I’d be mostly worried that you are forcing him to write lines. That is unbelievably boring and will make him hate writing. Generally boys don’t enjoy writing and he needs encouragement not punishment. Get him doing fine motor activities like playdough or Lego and display the alphabet in upper and lower case somewhere. His homework is more than enough to be doing at home.

Bones in the hands aren’t fully formed until adolescence so making him write over and over again might not change his handwriting anyway

That looks fine for a 7 yr old. I've got a 15 yr old (with additional needs) whose writing is nothing like that neat!

I’m a teacher - his letter formation and sizing looks mostly correct but I would expect the average Y3 child to be correctly joining at least some letters by now.

But there is no point writing lines. Pick a pair of letters (ng, ai, th etc) and practice a few words containing that pair of letters each day. When he is confident with joining one pair of letters, start working on another pair but keep at least one word from the previous sound. Shouldn’t take more than 5-10 min a day.

I’m a mum of a now (adult) with additional educational needs. We had a lot of Occupational therapy for fine motor skills.

making him do lines will bore the arse off him.

Things you could try. Pen/pencil grips. Try a few to seen if any help.

play to strengthen his dexterity. Trace a picture from a magazine use greaseproof paper if you haven’t got tracing paper.

Dot-to-puzzles are good

hama beads

use of scissors. Got any scrap paper. Draw a wiggly shape and ask your son to cut it out. Make a craft project from it.

My daughter had a laminated card to help her with spelling. It had the different letter combinations. Like ea , ee, er etc. I can’t remember what it was called but I’m sure if you ask your SENCO they will know what I mean.

I was coming to suggestion hand and dexterity exercises. One of my kids has very hyper mobile hands and fingers and we had to spend a long time building up the dexterity and strength in his hands. His handwriting is till poor, but he has hyper mobility so it’s reasonable and we’ll probably ask senco for assistance as it’s not improving and he’s y8. He gets very tired writing.

anyway, theraputty and dough disco (google it) would be helpful, building in writing naturally and finding opportunity might help. I’ve seen a lot worse though!

I am currently teaching year 3.

His handwriting is at the lower end of what I would expect to see from children coming up from Year 2 but not so far below the average that it would worry me.

I think you were right to have focused on his reading up until now so don't worry about what you have or haven't done.

It looks like the writing of someone who isn't particularly engaged in pencil and paper activities as children who spend a lot of time choosing to draw and write at home or in continuous provision/Golden Time at school do tend to have developed better handwriting by now. That's not a criticism; different children enjoy different things.

I'd offer him opportunities to write at home but not push too much if he isn't interested. Children often find the move from Year 2 to Year 3 a step up in terms of expectations and can get tired at the beginning of the year. If he has worked hard at school, asking him to write at home if he doesn't want to could put him off writing.

If he isn't interested in writing at home, work on activities to develop shoulder strength (climbing activities etc), finger strength (Google play dough gym) and fine motor control (anything which requires the pincer grip such as construction toys with fiddly little pieces). Go on the Internet and print off colouring pages with pictures of whatever he's interested in.

Write from the start is a good workbook to help with writing.