Teaching handwriting in the early years of schooling is fundamentally important
Research has established a strong relationship between handwriting skills and writing performance in the primary and middle years of schooling (Berninger & Swanson, 1994; Graham et al, 1997; Jones & Christensen, 1999; Kim et al, 2011).
“ Failing to develop handwriting automaticity in the early years may impact students’ writing development, their academic success, and their motivation and self-esteem.” (Graham et al, 1997)
Handwriting is a physical skill requiring regular explicit teaching and practice with new and previously learnt skills and knowledge. Forming letters by hand involves the organisation of visual, tactile, and perceptual motor skills, and higher-level cognitive skills.
“ Handwriting and letter perception recruit the same network of activation in the literate brain ... implying that handwriting experience plays a crucial role in the formation of the brain network that underlies reading.”
(James & Berninger, 2019)
Manipulating a pencil stimulates neural pathways in the brain which have been linked to letter recognition, reading, writing, and spelling achievement, as well as compositional quality and overall academic success.
Handwriting skills are the basis for reading and writing texts with success, and “a lack of development of handwriting fluency may contribute to an insufficient solid base for literacy tasks” (Ray, Dally & Lane, 2022). The downstream impacts of handwriting fluency are on writing quantity and quality, composition and content (what you write), wide and varied vocabulary use and comprehension. Writing that is legible, and that can be produced accurately and effortlessly, allows a student to attend to higher-level aspects of writing composition and content.
As students progress through schooling, the skill of handwriting is critical, especially when classroom activities and assessments are based on written work, such as in written exams, which remain a major form of assessment for Australian secondary school qualifications.
What does the evidence say?
The “Simple view of writing” (Berninger et al, 2002) and the Writing Rope (Sedita, 2019, Graham & Harris, 2000) are two conceptual frameworks that explain the essential components of developing proficient writing skills. The ‘Simple View of Writing’ sees writing as a product of two components: transcription (which includes handwriting and keyboarding) and text generation or composition skills. Transcription involves translating thoughts into written language, while text generation focuses on organising and conveying ideas effectively.
Similarly, the Writing Rope illustrates the interconnected skills and processes involved in developing writing abilities. Handwriting, spelling, composing, and executive function are intertwined elements, emphasising the complexity and interdependence of skills needed for successful writing.
Both models highlight the multifaceted nature of writing development, encompassing various skills and processes that contribute to overall writing proficiency. Students can’t be strong in just one area, as it doesn’t compensate for a weakness in another area of the writing process.
“ Research with Australian students tells us that keyboarding automaticity may also have positive impacts on learning.”
(Malpique et al, 2023, p 1454)
All students in their primary school years are digital natives, so first writing experiences are often digitally enabled (even from preschool age), and paper-based handwriting sometimes comes after, and sometimes not until they start school. At school, keyboarding is sometimes the preferred mode for some activities. For example, handwritten national assessments have been replaced by online assessments, and students’ literacy skills are being assessed by keyboarding as early as Year 3 (ACARA, 2021).
Less is known about keyboarding automaticity and writing (and reading) progress, but this research has shown positive relationships with keyboarding and writing performance, including students’ attitudes towards writing. It reveals “statistically significant associations between letter writing automaticity in both modalities [handwriting and keyboarding] and the quality and length of Year 2 children’s handwritten and keyboarded texts” (Malpique et al, 2023, p 1441).
“ [In this digital age, it is important to prepare students to] become ‘hybrid’ writers and be able to master both handwritten and keyboarding modalities”. There are “statistically significant positive associations between keyboarding automaticity, attitudes towards writing keyboarded texts, and children’s keyboarding outcomes, namely writing quality and text length.” (Malpique et al, 2023, p 1454)
Keyboarding (and other digital modalities) is also an important skill to learn for those students who will not, or cannot, use handwriting to create texts. As the Australian Curriculum states, “some will express themselves using augmentative and alternative communication strategies. This may include digital technologies, sign language, braille, real objects, photographs and pictographs” (ACARA).
How to teach handwriting to ensure automaticity and fluency
What to teach and when
A handwriting scope and sequence aligned to a curriculum provides a structured, developmental, and consistent approach to teaching essential handwriting skills and content. A scope and sequence ensures that students acquire handwriting skills in a logical order from simple to complex, with frequent opportunities to practise new and previously learnt skills and concepts.
For the first year of school, Oxford University Press aligns their scope and sequence for their Oxford Handwriting program to the Letters and Sounds phonics sequence. This provides opportunities to align handwriting with early phonics and spelling instruction.
For Years 1 and 2, letters are grouped by shape, and the letters are introduced within words and phrases that are decodable.
From Year 3 onwards, the focus is on learning to write faster and more fluently with cursive script.
Oxford Handwriting for New South Wales, Third Edition, Year K
Max and Malia played amazing music at the school concert.
Choose some interesting words from the previous page and write them on the lines below.
Self-assessment Put a circle around your best letter and word on each page. Explain your choice to your teacher or classmate.
Horizontal joins
Practise these horizontal joins. oi om on op or ot ou
Build three or more words from the base words, choosing the right suffixes from below. The first one is done for you. -ment -ed -ing -able , -y -ive -ion
Learning intention: To use horizontal joins for o, r, v, w and x
Horizontal joins are made from letters that finish near the top.
outings boost workout development explore exciting crucial
Word building! excite excitement excited exciting discover participate engage interact cooperate coordinate enjoy
Don’t forget: we usually drop the e at the end of words when adding a suffix.
Handwriting for New South Wales, Third Edition,
Oxford Handwriting for New South Wales, Third Edition, Year 1
Oxford Handwriting for New South Wales, Third Edition, Year 5
How to teach
Explicit and direct handwriting instruction when taught and then practised by students frequently ensures fluency and automaticity. The goal of explicit handwriting instruction focuses on “automatising letter and word formations to free up working memory for the significant idea management necessary for good writing” (Van Cleave, 2017).
The following components make up good explicit handwriting instruction:
3Ps – paper position, posture and pencil grip is modelled and checked prior to writing.
Letter formation – letters are formed consistently – knowing where upper- and lowercase letters start and finish and how to form them consistently.
Size – letters need to be the same size.
Spacing – letters in a word are close but not touching.
The baseline – all letters, upperand lower-case, sit on or move through the baseline.
Oxford Handwriting for New South Wales, Third Edition, Year 1
A gradual release of responsibility model, one aspect of explicit instruction and following the “I do, We do, You do” approach, emphasises a shift in responsibility from the teacher to the student as the teaching and learning process progresses:
X Students receive direct, explicit instruction in letter formation from the teacher.
X The teacher models and repeats the letter formation while the students trace letters at the same time.
X Students are supported to copy the letter independently and practise writing.
Samantha Donnan is a teacher who loves to write teaching and learning resources that are accessible, practical and evidence based for teachers and students alike. She has worked across both primary and high schools in many different roles. She is passionate about the science of reading and the science of learning and ensuring all children can participate in high-quality learning experiences.
Lee Walker is Product Director for Oxford University Press Australia & New Zealand. She has 30 years’ experience in Australian educational publishing, a career that first focused on primary literacy and mathematics research and product development, and then expanded to secondary and higher education, including a significant focus on digital innovation.
As digital technology continues to develop and makes it easier to access and communicate information without having to write – or even type – it is critical that we continue to place value on the skill of handwriting to be able to develop and express our personal selves, our thoughts, and our ideas, and to support learning success in reading, writing, and spelling.
References
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2021, National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), 2023 ed.
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/ literacy?element=2&sub-element=4.
Berninger, V., Abbot, R., Abbot, S., Graham, S. & Richards, T., 2002, Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35(1), pp 38–56.
Berninger, V. & Swanson, H., 1994, in Butterfield, E. (Ed.), Children’s Writing: Towards a Process Theory of Development of Skilled Writing, pp 57–8.
Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., Brooks, A. & Rogan, S., 1997, Treatment of handwriting fluency problems in beginning writing: Transfer from handwriting to composition, Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, pp 652–66.
Graham, S., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Abbott, S. & Whitaker, D., 1997, Role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach, Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, pp 170–82.
Graham, S. & Harris, R., 2000, The role of self-regulation and transcription skills in writing and writing development, Educational Psychologist, 35(1).
Heffernan, M., 2024, Decline of handwriting is on the wall, The Age, 6 April, Melbourne, Victoria.
Henry, J., 2022, ‘Writing has dropped off a cliff’: England’s lockdown-hit pupils get extra pen lessons, The Guardian, 23 July.
Jones, D. & Christensen, C.,1999, Relationship between automaticity in handwriting and students’ ability to generate written text, Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 44–49.
James, K & Berninger, V. , 2019, ‘Brain research shows why handwriting should be taught in the computer age ’, Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin, 51(1), 25–30.
Kim, Y., Al Otaiba, S., Puranik, C., Sidler, J., Greulich, L. & Wagner, R., 2011, Componential skills of beginning writing: An exploratory study, Learning and Individual Differences, 21, pp 517–25.
Malpique, A., Pino-Pasternak D., Valcan, D., 2017, Handwriting automaticity and writing instruction in Australian kindergarten: An exploratory study, Reading and Writing, 30(8), pp 1789–1812.
Malpique, A., Pino-Pasternak D., Valcan, D., Ledger, S.& Kelso-Marsh, B., 2023, Shaping young children’s handwriting and keyboarding performance: Individual and contextual-level factors, Issues in Educational Research, 33(4), pp 1441–60.
Ray, K., Dally, K. & Lane, A., 2022, Learning to read the write way: A policy brief, Bulletin, Learning Difficulties Australia, 54(3).
Sedita, J., 2019, Keys to Literacy, published in The Writing Rope: A Framework for Explicit Writing Instruction in All Subjects, Brookes Publishing Company.
The National Handwriting Association, 2024, Why is Handwriting Important? https://nha-handwriting.org.uk/handwriting/why-is-handwriting-important/.
Van Cleave, W., 2017, Handwriting in a Modern World: Why It Matters & What to Do About It, wvced.com, self-published.
Oxford Handwriting for New South Wales is a brand-new comprehensive program for K–6, which has been written for the NESA syllabus and supports a phonics-aligned approach.
The order of letters in the year K book is aligned with the Letters and Sounds phonics sequence, so that students learn to write the letters as they are learning to read them.
