Teaching penmanship using large motor skills part 1
It took me a while to write this up because I wanted to take pictures of this 6 years old boy that I have started tutoring in September 2007. He is going to be the case study of how you can train penmanship using large motor skills.
(I did not show the child this sheet, some of you who knows Montessori well enough would know it’s not Montessori to “mark” the sheet or “correct” the answers.)
He has been to preschool since 3 years old, he cannot read and the above is what he had written down when I dictated 20 out of the 26 letter names. So, his problem is much more serious than the normal uncertainty of whether there are two or one “f” in Differin.
You would have expected most children to know how to write out the 26 letters from memory (without looking) since they have been writing don’t know how many worksheets. You will be surprised. It is quite common for children who have written hundred pages of handwriting practices and could not write a-z from memory. One of the things that went wrong was: the children were just copying the letters as pictures and there were no muscle memory and automaticity.
We want to train their muscles to remember because if they spend too much time trying to recall the picture memory of the letters, they would end up spending all their energy on that and none left to remember what they are writing.
Filed under Learning problem, Pre Writing Exercises, penmanship |
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