“Does handwriting matter? Not very much according to educators. The Common Core standards, which we have adopted in most states, call for teaching legible handwriting, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.”
“What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades” – by Maria Konnikova
The article suggests evidence is emerging of a greater link between handwriting and learning. It appears children learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand.
A 2012 study by Karin James at the Indiana University supported the association between handwriting and learning. Children who had not learned to read were presented with index cards with a letter or shape they were to reproduce. They could either:
- Trace the image on a page with a dotted outline.
- Draw it on a blank sheet of paper.
- Type it on a computer.
A study of their brain waves as they reproduced the shape or letter showed an area of the brain, active when an adult reads and writes, was highly stimulated when the child drew the letter on a blank sheet of paper. The activation was significantly weaker through the other two processes.
Learning is a complicated process. When we reproduce letters, or anything else, by hand a plan is required before executing the action. The result is highly variable in that it will not exactly represent the original. Learning to identify variable representations is important to decoding letters when reading.
The research by Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at University of Washington, indicated that when a child who composed text by hand (either printing or cursive) “They not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on the keyboard, but expressed more ideas.”
There is also a suggestion of different neuropathways being developed in the brain when a child progresses on from printing to cursive writing.
Research at the University of California have reported laboratory and real-world studies of students learning better when they take notes by hand than when they type on a keyboard.
So, is it time to throw away the pen and paper and adopt the technology and the keyboard? Was it time to give up walking when we invented the car?
Once upon a time, a little boy named Ethan lived in a very nice neighbourhood, in a very nice house but the people who were raising him were very, very horrible and selfish. Even though they were fat and rich, his punishment was so cruel that they locked him up in the cellar for most of the day and while his mother and father were upstairs eating fudge and custard, Ethan was living on the mould and bacteria off the walls. One night, he heard squeaking and it sounded like a million mice and he was certain because he could smell rat droppings as well. Little tiny mice were chewing the wall and Ethan was happy to see daylight because the wall had disintegrated. Ethan got out and found a new home to live in with nice people.
On a rainy, cold winter morning in Dublin, Alex and Fiona watched in amazement as everyone around them slowly disappeared into the foggy air. They heard a loud cheer and clinks and clanks that could be sword fighting and they realised they had somehow been transported into the middle of a gladiator fight. A big, strong man charged over and forced two golden swords into their hands and told them to fight for their life. Alex stabbed with his sword at a highly-scarred, fierce gladiator who collapsed with a gasp, and Fiona fought a ferocious lion who bit off her leg. Suddenly the cheering crowd disappeared into the foggy air and they rushed to the Dublin hospital to save Fiona’s life.
It was just after lunch and Bang! The puppet knocked over the bookshelf which fell on top of the new television. She had straight yellow wool for hair with black sewn-on buttons for eyes and inside her long pink dress was my hand. Mum stomped into the room as the puppet grinned but it was me that Mum shouted at. When Mum turned her back, the puppet jumped on the counter, ripped the paintings off the wall and tipped over the bowl of fruit. After lunch, I took the puppet off my hand , picked up the mess and mopped the floors.
How important is it to be a reader in this world of instant information? Does sitting with your child and playing computer games produce the same outcome as sitting with them and reading a book? Does it matter that you have never sat with your child and read to them before they have attended school?
Just before dawn two young explorers were in the jungle walking past a large shrub when they spotted an injured chameleon. They were animal carers so they took the chameleon back to the lab to fix him up and they found out he had a broken back leg. Without bandages, they had to go exploring to find a leaf with a numbing agent called the Squashbugla. Just before the next morning they found the leaves and fixed the chameleon.
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