The downside to the Information Age is the decrease in fine motor skills used for writing.
It is a problem presenting more often as laptops and tablets replace the use of pad and pen. An increasing number of students are unable to form legible letters of the alphabet or write numbers clearly enough so they may read them thirty seconds later.
Some students going into Year 8 are incapable of writing between the lines of a paper or forming numbers within the squares of a quad ruled page. Students in Year 5 are unable to produce or read their name in cursive script. These students are struggling with the fine motor skills required to help them to learn.
An article by Maria Konnikova, “What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades?”, 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.
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.
Researchers 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.
I ask you, “Is it time to throw away the pen and paper and adopt the technology of the keyboard? Was it time to give up walking when we invented the car?”
My suggestion to help build a better student is to let your pre-school child use colouring books and pencils; jigsaw puzzles and building blocks; to help develop fine motor skills. When they are at school continue to use the old-fashioned copy book, so your student may practise and learn to form letters and numbers. Encourage them to practise twenty minutes a day until they are proficient with writing the printed word. Allow this to develop into the practice of cursive writing so they may be able to record classroom notes in secondary school, lecture notes at university or record the minutes of a business meeting.
We may lose so much by giving up the pen.
By Peter Kenyon: Tutor
Not everyone learns the same way, and that creates problems in classrooms and at home.
One night I left the stove on at my stinky house and I was woken by the unfamiliar smell of fire and hoary rubbish that I left on the table. By the time I got to the kitchen, I smelt the fire cooking a stale apple core and a decayed banana peel that smelt gross, and the dog food that smelt nice. The fireman said, ‘’You smell like you haven’t had a bath for 6 months!” and I said, “That’s true”. He sprayed rusty water on me with his big water hose until I smelt as lovely as a rose. While the fire brigade was busy washing me, my house was busy turning into a vessel of lovely ashes.
This morning, my friend, Jonah, who is eight year’s old, like me, shot a nerf-bullet to get his mate’s attention in the wood-house. They were both at Jonah’s family’s Californian farmhouse, just beside the magic tree. The bullet hit the magic tree in the face just as it was waking up and that hurt it a lot and it caused the tree to fall. The tree dragged itself up and then whacked the old wood-house into lots of bits of wood until the barn didn’t exist anymore. Jonah and his mate called 000 and the ambulance took them to the hospital.
Type ‘student’ into Fotolia and you have 14337 pages of pupils sitting quietly at their desk diligently working away. DREAM ON.
When John and Jeff came to the ditch on the way to school, Jeff slipped and hit his head on a stick. The ten-year-old twins were alike in many ways as both were playful and blonde. John came down to Jeff to remove the stick from his head when suddenly a vicious alligator burst from the water and chased them up the slope and all the way to school. The teacher opened the window and through a baton at the alligator and the kids ran into the school room. The teacher said, “That’s what happens when you’re late for school’.
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.
We all want our children to do well in school and in life, but how do you ignite that spark that fuels a need for knowledge. How does your child develop an interest in the world around them?
Well, if your child was an average student last year chances are they will be an average student this year. If they struggled with maths last year they will probably be struggling with maths this year. Nothing changes unless something changes. What has to change to improve your child’s grades?
And on the other side of the coin insufficient sleep will make children hyperactive, lacking in confidence, irritable, inattentive and fall behind in class and if this sounds like your youngster then it is so easy to rectify.
XtraMile Tuition Strategies (North Brisbane) - 0415 049461 