Teaching your child the vocabulary related to placement (preposition) and direction is import in supporting them to understand and follow instructions, as well as sharing information themselves, such as; ‘put your cup on the table’ or to say ‘teddy in car’.
We also use this placement (preposition) and directional language to explain how to draw shapes, patterns and write letters and numbers.
We have created three sets of picture cards and games to help you support your child in developing and using positional (preposition) and directional vocabulary.
“A word used with a noun or pronoun to show place, position, time or means, e.g. at home, in the hall, on Sunday, by train.” Definition from Oxford School Dictionary, third edition 2002.
Here are just some preposition and directional phrases you might like to use:
On the … On top of the … Above the … Over the…
Under the… Below the … Beneath … Underneath …
Behind the …
In front of the…
Next to …Beside the … On the right of … To the right of … On the right-hand side … On the left of … To the left of … On the left-hand side… Before the … After the …
In the… Inside the …
Out of the … Outside of the …
Between the … In between the … In the middle … In the center …
Going up the …. Going down the … Going towards the… Going away from …
Here at Teach Children we have always promoted the importance and power of teaching the correct letter names to begin with; through our Teach Handwriting website, Schemes and Teach Phonics website. Unfortunately, some schools, teacher and parents still seem to be concerned that this is not consistent with the teaching of phonics, which is just not correct.
A myth which became popular, in the early years of introducing synthetic phonics into schools, is that children should not be taught the alphabet letter names as they find it too confusing. However, in recent years this has started to change as phonics schemes have adjusted some of their approaches to teaching phonics to include the use of letter names.
Learning the unique letter names of the alphabet is a pre-phonics skill; as well as an early learning goal. It has to be remembered that a letter is a shape which only represents a sound when it is placed within a word or sentence (has a context). Also, a letter or combination of letters can represent more than one sound and so the only unique way of identifying alphabet letters when we talk about them is to use their names.
It is important to remember that just because a child can correctly recite the ‘Alphabet’ song it does not mean they know the letters of the alphabet. It is surprising how many children can do this but when shown letters from the alphabet cannot name them at all. They may be able to tell you the sound the letter makes but have no idea of the letters name.
Learning the correct letter names helps to reinforce that when talking about the letter ‘a’ (ay) for example it has a set shape regardless of the sound that it will be representing in the word. This further supports children’s handwriting development as the communication of your requirements is unambiguous.
Teaching the correct letter names is important when supporting handwriting as this can in turn affect a child’s phonics understanding later on. For example, it can seem very easy when explaining to a child which letter to write when they ask which one is making a ‘kuh’ sound in a word such as cat to say a ‘curly kuh’. There is no such letter in the alphabet called ‘curly kuh’ it is the letter ‘c’ (cee). By adding the ‘kuh’ sound to the letter it reinforces incorrect phonics knowledge. The letter ‘c’ does not make a ‘kuh’ sound in words such as: city, circle, cycle and centre.
Some children will then only ever refer to the letter ‘c’ as ‘curly kuh’ and the letter ‘k’ as’ kicking kuh’. As I say these are not letter names of the alphabet and also devalue the power of phonics at the same time.
How can the education establishment get hot under the collar about not using the correct terminology in the teaching of English in schools such as: phonemes, graphemes, digraphs, modal verbs etc… yet still refer to the letter’s ‘c’ and ‘k’ as ‘curly or kicking kuh’!
Phonics is a powerful decoding and encoding tool. However, so is the alphabet letter naming system. Both need to working side by side to support our children, especially in those early years of their educational journey.
The English phonic system is very complex but this is why our language is so rich. Young children need to use letter names as an additional tool, as it takes many years for them to be introduced to the more complex phonics coding system.
Not all children enjoy drawing and colouring and it can be difficult to encourage them. There are a number of reasons why some children seem reluctant to draw, paint or colour. For instance, some will not like the smell of the paint or crayons, while others may find the pencils, brushes or crayons too thin, long or heavy. Others may be reluctant due to past negative experiences. It can be tricky to work out exactly why a child doesn’t want to draw or write.
Here we have some tips and ideas that may help you to get started:
Paper Size– Some children like large pieces of paper to work on while others can be daunted by the prospect. Start off by having a range of paper sizes and colours for your child to choose from, this way you can find out which size of paper they prefer to work on.
Vertical surface – Having the paper pinned vertically on a drawing board or wall may also help encourage your child to have a go at drawing more than if the paper is laid flat on a table.
Drawing & Writing Tools – Have a range of pencil and crayon thicknesses, lengths and colours so that your child can choose the ones they feel most comfortable using. Try to make sure that the pencils are sharp enough to be used effectively as picking up and using a blunt pencil can be a negative experience which can turn a child off drawing or writing.
You could try using different drawing tools to start with such as chalks or special glass pens (which are great fun and designed to clean off easily).
Draw Together – Before you start drawing think about the kind of things that will interest your child, for instance drawing a train may be ideal for your little boy but not necessarily for your little girl. Use simple shapes to draw the objects so that over time your child will be able to copy so they too can draw successfully the train, cat or car. Practise by yourself so that when you are doing the drawing with your child it comes easily to you so that you can talk through what you are doing.
We have created some new drawings using simple shapes which you may find helps you to get started. Follow this link and scroll down the page a little you will find them under the ‘Activities to help hand development’: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/more-activities.html
Tips:
Pick a time and place where you can start to draw in the same room/area as your child is playing. Start off by just sitting and drawing without actively involving your child. It is surprising how often a child will come to checkout and ask you what you are doing. They may just stand and watch for a while and go back to playing, just carry on and complete the picture without them. Leave the picture for them to see, you could let them know you have drawn it for them and have a little chat about it.
It may take a few goes but hopefully you will find that your child will watch for longer, maybe even asking you to draw different things in the picture, use certain colours, or want to help you colour or draw things.
At this stage it can help to explain what you are doing, for instance, if you are drawing a straight line or a wavy line to make a shape or pattern.
Other language you may use:
Straight, short, long, diagonal, up towards …, down towards …, across, curvy, wavey, zig zag, squiggly, swirling, dots, dashes.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about placement (preposition) and directional vocabulary which would also be great to use and help your child to develop as part of drawing activities.
By sharing and showing your child how to draw shapes and make pictures it gives them a positive and successful drawing experience, which encourages and gives them confidence to have ago for themself.
Young children’s first experience on the handwriting journey is through mark-making and simple drawings, whether it is with finger-paints, writing in sand or with pencils and crayons.
From about the age of 2, children start to move from a simple grasping (primitive) grip to one that secures the writing tool between the fingers and the thumb. In the early stages of mark-making and drawing young children will try different grips and holds, which is part of their normal development for handwriting and drawing.
As young children’s body (gross motor skills), hand strength and dexterity (fine motor skills) are developing they need a range of pencil, crayon and paint brush thicknesses. Young children need the thicker drawing tools as they can grip them more easily, helping them to mark-make. If the pencil is too thin, they find it difficult to grasp and have little control over it, making the drawing experience unsuccessful, which can lead to frustration and discourage them from trying again.
Due to the stage of their physical development young children use large movements to draw (from the shoulder rather than the wrist) which often creates larger shapes and lines.
During the early stages a vertical drawing and painting surface is important as it allows the child the freedom of movement to fully explore their mark-making potential. It also helps young children to develop the wrist strength and flexibility which they will need later to hold a pencil correctly for handwriting.
Using plain paper and surfaces is considered best for young children as they find it less restrictive. It has been widely acknowledged that a child who is forced to hold a writing tool using the dynamic tripod grip, before they are developmentally ready, can be turned off engaging in the drawing/writing process as well as developing a poor pencil grip later on. Remember some children do not develop the ability to use the dynamic tripod grip until the age of 5/6 years old.
As a child’s gross and fine motor skills develop so does their pencil grip and ability to draw and write at a small scale moving more from the elbow and wrist and progressing through the grip stages.
So, the school report has been received and you have been told that your child needs to improve their handwriting.
This is all well and good, but what exactly needs improving?
What are they finding difficult and how on earth do you write a continuous cursive z?
So, you eventually get some handwriting practice sheets home or off the web. But no amount of time spent doing them seems to make much difference. It seemed to take longer to get them started than they spent practising handwriting. In fact they seemed worse because they were unhappy and frustrated with their own progress, so the more you try to push them the more resistant they become. Eventually you think there has to be a better way than this?
Doing more of what you are already struggling with is not always the answer. Handwriting is a complex skill to learn and there are a number of reasons why a child may be struggling.
To begin with I would suggest looking at the following:
your child’s pencil grip
their sitting position
Their paper position and tilt.
Then I would look at letter formation skills, our free animations and worksheets may help. If you think your child needs something more structured then take a look at our Parents shop (https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/shop.html ).
It is important to check and know which letter formations are being taught in school and that this is what you teach at home. Otherwise, you will only be causing more frustration and stress for your child
Many children and some teenagers struggle with handwriting because, they just haven’t developed all the gross and fine motor required. For older students it often relates to weak/poor fine motor skills. In younger ones it maybe they have not had enough experience of certain physical activities which is affecting the level of their gross and fine motor skills development.
There are many games and activities that can support gross and fine motor skills development. A number can be found in our ‘Learning Through Play’ section and the ‘Warm ups’: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/warm-ups.html ’ activities are suitable for teenagers as well.
The summer holidays are a great time for you to be able to observe and support your child’s gross and fine motor skills and strengths. Armed with this knowledge you can play games and do activities which then help them to develop the strengths and skills which may be holding them back and making handwriting a difficult task to master.
At Teach Children our aim is to move children off of worksheets as soon as possible. To achieve this, it is important to encourage them to transfer their skills to plain or lined paper whichever is most appropriate to their ability level. We realise that it is not always possible to buy paper with the appropriate line height in all cases, so would recommend creating your own on the computer.
Use a combination of worksheets and lined paper in each handwriting session with your child:
Use the colour worksheet, or a grey scale version, and complete one or two rows.
Then encourage the child to try the same patterns or letters on appropriately lined paper, again try one or two rows only.
Hopefully the worksheet will last over a couple of handwriting sessions and you and the child will see an improvement over the time. The sooner they learn to transfer their skills to paper the better.
We realise that printing off our worksheets and coloured lined paper can become costly so, to help reduce the costs:
Use a colour version of the appropriate worksheet initially and then try printing in grey scale. Children usually make the adjustment to grey scale well once they are used to how the picture clues and colours work.
You could also use the grey scale worksheets and colour the start of each row with the appropriate colour.
Motor memory and visual memory difficulties can have a dramatic effect on a child’s handwriting ability. Possible signs of poor motor memory or visual memory skills can be that their handwriting is slow and deliberate or fast and messy (as they try to hide their letter formation issues), making it difficult to read. They can spend so much time on trying to remember how to form the letters, they have no working memory space left for the important tasks of composing their writing and spelling.
Poor motor memory skills can make handwriting difficult as shapes and letter formation movements are often forgotten, causing letter reversals and incorrectly formed letter shapes, which can make joining a very slow process to learn. A poor and often slow handwriting style can develop as font styles are mixed and capital letters are used inappropriately. Combined, these difficulties can cause poor presentation, spelling and legibility issues.
Poor visual memory skills make handwriting difficult as the ability to recall how letters look and reproduce them with appropriate spacing and positioning is partially or completely lost. This leads to poor letter formation skills, letter reversal along with spelling and presentation difficulties.
Visual memory and motor memory skills are linked and so a game or activity that supports one is likely to support the other.
Copying accurately and quickly from a board at the front of a classroom can be a challenge at the best of times. For young children and those with specific learning difficulties it can be near on impossible. It is amazing how many children lose some, if not all, of a break time because they could not complete the copying task quickly enough in the lesson time.
The practise of taking information off the board has its uses and there are times when there is just no other alternative but it can be made more manageable, here are a few ideas which may help.
Make sure the child is sitting facing the board.
That they can see the board clearly.
That light is not reflecting off the board so that the writing disappears.
Try using a different colour marker pen for each line of writing (this way a child will be able to quickly locate the line they were copying from).
Or try numbering the lines so the child can more effectively find their way around the text.
Leave more of a gap between each line of writing so that each line is clearly visible from the back of the room.
Ask those children, who struggle copying, to start the first line of writing as you transfer the text to a smaller board which can then be placed at a more appropriate distance and level for them to continue copying from.
If you know the information that will need to be transferred to the child’s book then pre-prepare a text that can be given to the child to copy from. It may be in a different order or layout to that on the board; but it is the information and the child’s ability to access it, that is important.
Is a full sentence explanation always required or could the information be presented in another way such as a mind map or diagram which would be equally, or even more, useful to the child.
It can be surprising how frustrating and upsetting being asked to copy from the board can be for many children. So, anything that can help to alleviate these emotions and difficulties has got to be worth a try!
Eye tracking and/or spatial awareness difficulties can have a dramatic effect on a child’s handwriting ability. Weak skills in these key areas make it difficult for children to form letters correctly (curves and lines often not joining to complete the letter shape), as well as being unable to appropriately space letters in words and words in sentences. Other poor presentation skills include being unable to write on lines and often missing lines out when following on with a sentence.
It is also worth pointing out that a child with poor eye tracking and/or spatial awareness skills will also find reading difficult.
Eye tracking is the ability to control and coordinate the fine eye movements needed:
For left to right eye movements, without moving the head, needed to follow a line of writing as the letters are formed or for reading a line of print.
To focus and move the eyes to follow an object without moving the head, in all directions.
To track/follow objects near and far.
To focus on one object without moving the eyes.
Poor eye tracking skills can make handwriting very difficult, causing letter formation, spacing and positioning problems, leading to poor presentation. Often words are missed out or repeated, causing composition and legibility issues.
Activities that help to build these strengths and skills are: Swing Ball, target games and catching games.
Game idea: Goal post skittles
You need: Posts/marker, large plastic drink bottles/skittles and a range of ball sizes.
How to do it:
Place the posts about 2 metres away from the start position and about half a metre apart. Place the skittles about half a metre behind the posts but directly between them. The child starts by rolling a large ball through the posts to knock the skittles over. Before they roll the ball explain to get a maximum score, they need to knock all the skittles over in one roll and that the best way to do this is to look directly ahead through the posts at the skittles, NOT at the ball or their hand.
It may take a little practise, as they improve, they can use a different size ball or move the skittles so that they form different patterns which means they have to be more accurate with the roll.
This game can also be used as a foot and eye activity, the same rules apply, they must look to where they want the ball to end up not at their feet or the ball, tricky!
Spatial awareness is the ability to be aware of:
The space around you and your position in that space.
The position and relationship of other objects in relation to one another and yourself.
Poor spatial awareness skills make handwriting difficult as it affects the ability to understand and produce the directional pushes and pulls required to form letters; as well as difficulties with spacing and positioning. Combined, these difficulties can cause poor presentation and possible legibility issues.
Activities that help to build these strengths and skills are: games such as ‘Twister’ or ‘Simon Says’ and jigsaws and pattern making.
Games idea: Pattern making
You need: Beads, building blocks, Lego or shapes.
How to do it:
Talk through the process of making the same pattern as shown on a card or already produced; for instance, the red square goes on the right of the blue square and the yellow square is below the blue square. Ask the child to verbalise what they see and are doing to recreate the pattern.
Patterns can be created and copied with all sorts of items – beads, building blocks, Lego and shapes.
As skill levels improve tessellation (a pattern of shapes that fit perfectly together) activities and square or patterned paper for colouring and creating their own pattern designs are enjoyable.
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