Transcription Interventions

Handwriting is the act of forming letters with a pencil or a pen. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to support your student's handwriting. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your student's strengths and needs in the whole-learner domains.

Explicit Instruction

If you are intervening to support your student's handwriting, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:

• Explain the Skill/Concept. Define handwriting, and explain the activity. ("Handwriting is using a pencil to write letters. This includes how we draw the letters, where the letters sit on the lines, the spaces in between the letters, and what the letters look like. It is important to form letters correctly so that other people can read what we are trying to say." "Today we are going to practice activities that help us work on all of these components." )
• Model Skill with Examples. Think aloud about a well-formed letter. ("Look at how I draw an 'l.' I start at the headline and draw all the way to the bottom line. You can see that my lower case l is as tall as the line, and that it goes straight down.")
• Model Skill with Non-Examples. Think aloud about a letter that is not formed well. ("Watch as I write this lower case l again. What if I started in the middle of the line, and went to the bottom, and made sort of a squiggly line. Is it hard to tell this is a lower-case l? Yes! If a person tries to read our writing, and we wrote an 'l' like this, then he wouldn't know what we were trying to say! That's why it's important that we focus on forming our letters properly.)
• Practice the Skill. Engage in one or more of the activities below to practice the skill with your student, providing feedback as necessary. ("Now you try. I'm going to show you...")

Activity A: Letter Formation
If your student is an emerging writer and needs practice with letter formation, teach this strategy. Emerging writers require explicit modeling and practice to learn how to write the letters correctly. In order to do this, name the steps required to write each letter. For example, in forming a capital P, a student must take four steps:

• Step 1. Find the headline
• Step 2. Pull Down Straight, Lift
• Step 3. Find the Headline
• Step 4. Circle Forward, Lift

Click here to be directed to Handwriting for Kids, a website that will show you how to form each letter, as well as provide additional resources that support letter formation.

Jlillis. (2017, February 28). 7 Steps to Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Disabilities. Brookes Blog. https://blog.brookespublishing.com/7-steps-to-teaching-writing-skills-to-students-with-disabilities/#:~:text=7%20Steps%20to%20Teaching%20Writing%20Skills%20to%20Students

Letter Formation in Action
Show the student how to form each letter by providing a series of steps. Then, have the student say each step as he forms the letter. "When we write the letter P, we need to start at the headline. We pull down straight, lift. Find the headline. Circle forward, lift. Now, you practice, saying each step as you go."

In this clip, Emma McCormack teaches her students how to write the letter P. Notice how she models on the board and has students repeat each step.

Activity B: Teach Similar Features
If your student has not learned handwriting yet, or needs assistance with writing many of the letters, consider teaching the letters grouped by similar features instead of in alphabetical order. This strategy is more effective because it teaches groups of letters with similar features at the same time. Beverly J. Wolf, an expert on learning disabilities, advocates for teaching letters in the following groups:

• The h Group: h, b, m, n, r, and p
• The a Group: a, c, d, g, o, q, and s
• i, j, k, l, and t
• v, w, and x
• e, u, y, and z

There are multiple research-based approaches to teaching letter formation that incorporate these guiding principles and teach letters in this order. As you read about the following interventions, consider how the approaches are similar to and different from each other.

Procedure for Letter Formation
Readman, L. (2009). Handwriting for kidsRetrieved from http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/

Teach Similar Features in Action
Identify a letter that a student has been forming incorrectly. Ask him to write a sample sentence that contains that letter. Then, select the letter, and model correct formation with a marker. Write the letter a few times while describing the steps. Then have the student trace the letter, stating the steps. Have the student trace the letter in the air as you describe the steps. Finally, have the student practice writing the letter.

Teacher, identifying that the student is having trouble forming the letter 'p': "I'm going to ask you to write a silly sentence for me. Could you write, "The big man put his hat on?" (Student writes.)

Teacher: "Thank you for writing this sentence. I can see that we should work on the letter p. Watch as I write p. I start at the middle line, and I pull down past the bottom line. Then, I go back to the middle line and circle forward. Watch as I do it again." (Teacher does it again and repeats steps.)

Teacher: "Now, you trace it as I tell you the steps." (Teacher repeats steps as student traces.) "Excellent job tracing the p. Now, close your eyes, and pretend you have a can of spray paint. I'm going to tell you the steps as you spray paint the letter into the air." (Teacher states steps as student "spray-paints.")

Teacher:"Great, now, you practice writing the letter and saying the steps." (The next day, the teacher reviews this activity and teaches other letters in the h group that the student struggles with.)

Activity C: Cursive Script
If your student struggles with hand-writing letters, try teaching him cursive. Explicit teaching of cursive script is often missing from today's classrooms. For students with dyslexia, however, learning cursive script can ease many difficulties associated with handwriting. This is because block-letter formation is often tedious and unnatural, which affects a student's ability to spell and to write sentences or paragraphs fluently. Cursive script promotes continuous letter strokes in which the pencil is lifted only when necessary (e.g., to cross a t or to begin a new word). Cursive also reduces the likelihood of reversals.

Similar to what they advocate in teaching manuscript, researchers also advocate for teaching cursive script in groups of letters with similar attributes:

• "Swing up, stop" letters: i, p, w, r, t, u, j, and s
• "Push up and over" letters: m, v, y, n, x, and z
• "Curve under, over, stop" letters: a, c, d, q, o, and q
• "Curve way up, loop left" letters: b, f, h, k, l, and e

If you think your student would benefit from learning cursive, D'Nealian script is the type of cursive most often taught to students with dyslexia. For more information, click here to visit the D'Nealian website.

Cursive Script in Action
Identify a letter that a student has been forming incorrectly. Then, model correct formation in cursive. Write the letter a few times while describing the steps. Then have the student trace the letter, stating the steps. Have the student trace the letter in the air as you describe the steps. Finally, have the student practice writing the letter.

Teacher: (identifying that the student is having trouble forming the letter 'p'): "I'm going to show you a new way to write the letter p that might make it easier for you. This way is called cursive, and it's a fancy way of writing letters. Watch as I write p. I swing up, stop, push down, swing up, stop, and curl around. This is a p in cursive." (Teacher does it again and repeats steps.)

Teacher: "Now, you trace it as I tell you the steps." (Teacher repeats steps as student traces.)

Teacher:"Excellent job tracing the p. Now, close your eyes, and pretend you have a can of spray paint. I'm going to tell you the steps as you spray paint the letter into the air." (Teacher states steps as student "spray-paints.")

Teacher:"Great, now, you practice writing the letter and saying the steps." (The next day, the teacher reviews this activity and teaches other letters in the "swing up, stop" group that the student struggles with.)

Jlillis. (2017, February 28). 7 Steps to Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Disabilities. Brookes Blog. https://blog.brookespublishing.com/7-steps-to-teaching-writing-skills-to-students-with-disabilities/#:~:text=7%20Steps%20to%20Teaching%20Writing%20Skills%20to%20Students

Activity D: Reversals
If your student is reversing many letters when he writes, you'll want to consider whether this is just a developmental stage, or part of his disability. For young writers, letter reversals are incredibly common and should be treated as minor errors that can be corrected during the editing stage of writing. When should you be concerned about letter reversals? Beyond the age of seven, letter reversals could be a sign of a learning disability. Fortunately, for students of all ages, teachers can implement a number of best practices and interventions to reduce and eliminate letter reversals.

In general, when teaching a student about letter reversals:

• Do not emphasize timed writing activi­ties, as reversals are more frequent in this type of activity
• Help the student create a list of the more common words containing the reversal(s), and review the words that contain the problematic letters through a multi-sen­sory approach. Have the student say the individual letter sounds as he or she traces over the whole word
• Use visual cues to help students remember direction (e.g., arrows, color-coded letters, a cue word, or an index card with the letter written)
• Use multi-sensory methods (e.g., make a "b" or a "d" with student's hand to have him remember which comes first in the alphabet, or have him trace letters.)
• Separate instruction for frequently reversed letters (e.g., practice b and d on differ­ent occasions)
• Teach the student that the letter b has a hump on its right side, the letter d has a hump on its left side, and the letter p has a tail that goes down
• Use a mnemonic device to distinguish between difficult-to-remember letters or numbers (e.g., teach that the upward strokes in b and d form the head­boards in the word bed).

Click here to read about additional techniques for teaching the avoidance of reversals.

Reversals in Action
Point out the letters that are being reversed. Then, give the student strategies for writing the letters the correct way.
Teacher: (pointing to the word "dip," in which the student reversed the d and wrote "bip" instead): Read this word.
Student: Dip.
Teacher: Listen as I read the word you wrote, bip. Why did I read it that way?
Student: Oh, I wrote the wrong letter.
Teacher: Let's practice writing our d's. Here is the word, dad, which has two d's in it. Watch as I trace and say each letter. D. A. D. Dad. Now, you try.
Student: D.A.D. Dad.
Teacher: Excellent. Now, close your eyes, and do it again.
Student: D.A.D. Dad.
Teacher: Excellent. Now, close your eyes, and spray paint it on the wall.
Student: D.A.D. Dad.
Teacher: Excellent. Now, every time you write a 'd,' I want you to think of how we formed all three letters in dad, and think of the word dad when you aren't sure if you should write a 'b' or a 'd.'

Jlillis. (2017, February 28). 7 Steps to Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Disabilities. Brookes Blog. https://blog.brookespublishing.com/7-steps-to-teaching-writing-skills-to-students-with-disabilities/#:~:text=7%20Steps%20to%20Teaching%20Writing%20Skills%20to%20Students

Activity E: Metacognition
If your student struggles to start or complete a task, or forgets the correct sequence for producing a letter, Metacognition might be a strategy that aids with his handwriting. Metacognition, most simply defined, is thinking about thinking. Many struggling writers, including those in their early writing careers, have challenges with executive functioning, and teaching a student to self-evaluate may help him focus on the task at hand. Metacognition benefits a student in his long-term functioning and independence, and is equally beneficial when he is learning a new concept or maintaining fluency in a skill.

Metacognition applies to many aspects of writing, including handwriting. The process of self-evaluation can be applied before, during, and after handwriting exercises to make them more effective. Prompt your student to consider:

1. Am I sitting properly for handwriting?
2. Do I have my paper positioned correctly?
3. Do I have a correct pencil grip?
4. Do all my letters seem to be on the line?
5. Do all my uppercase letters touch or come close to touching the top line?
6. Do my lowercase letters touch or come close to touching the middle line?
7. Do I have the right amount of space between letters?
8. Do I have the right amount of space between words?

This type of routine will also build metacognitive habits, which are crucial to writing longer compositions.

Metacognition in Action
After teaching the student best practices for handwriting, teach him to be metacognitive by asking himself questions. You can prompt him to ask the questions at first, and then give him visual cues with which to prompt himself.

Teacher, noticing a student who slouches as he writes: "Tyrese, I notice that you are hunched over as you write. Remember to ask yourself questions as you write so that you can do your best handwriting. You might ask, Am I sitting properly for handwriting? Now, you try it. Every time you notice you aren't doing your best handwriting, ask yourself that question."

Troia, G. A. (2009;2008;). Instruction and assessment for struggling writers: Evidence-based practices. Guilford Press.

Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a student strategies for handwriting:

Teacher: "Write the word bat."
Student writes the word dat.

In such a case, what might you do?

When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and that a given student might respond better to some types of feedback than to others.

Level of Support	Description of Scaffold	Script
Smallest Scaffold	Check your Resources. As you continue to use these interventions, your student should look back to his writing to see how to write letters.	"Look in your notebook: what does a 'b' look like? What steps do we take to make one?"
Medium Scaffold	Back it Up. If a student is struggling, back up your process. Model how to write the letter, and then allow the student to try. See if the student can write the letter after you've modeled the technique. If he is unable, you should walk him through the process Step by Step (see below).	"Watch as I make a 'b.' Then, you'll try."
Highest Scaffold	Step by Step. If the student continues to struggle, walk him through each specific step. providing guidance as needed.	"Here are the steps to making a 'b.' Find the headline, pull straight down, lift. Find the midline, circle forward, lift. Now, watch as I say each step and write the 'b' again. Then, you'll practice."

If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might employ in order to adjust the activity so as best to meet your student's needs.

Activity	Description of Strategy	Script
All Activities	Make it Fun! Teaching handwriting can be tedious, so find a way to engage your student by singing the steps or putting them to a rhythm. Celebrate small successes as the student learns to form the letters.	"Let's sing each step as we go!"