“Why is handwriting progress stuck at paragraphs?” This question came up in my Legible Handwriting for Kids program.
So many times we introduce something new to our kids and we kind of skip to the next step a little bit too soon. And then we wonder, we’re seeing some progress, but should we be seeing more progress? Yep, that’s exactly what happened to a student of mine.
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When Handwriting Progress Stops
With this particular student, the mom and the child worked together through the Legible Handwriting for Kids program’s step-by-step process to get that legible, easy-to-read handwriting.
The program starts off with words, sentences, and then moves on to paragraphs. There was so much progress between the words, and so much progress when we saw the sentences.
His letter size and letter spacing were improving, and most importantly, we saw that it was getting really easy for this young man to complete his writing assignments.
They got so excited at all the progress he had been making that they went very quickly from sentences to paragraphs.
But then when it came to the paragraphs, he wasn’t making as much progress as he had before. What was going on?
The Importance of Not Skipping Steps
What happens is that part of what we do with the Legible Handwriting for Kids program is we want that fluency piece. Fluency is accuracy plus speed.
If we don’t properly build fluency during the sentence phase, a lot of times when we get to the paragraph phase, we don’t see as much progress as we need for fluent easy handwriting
So when the student’s parent brought up her question during one of our Q+A sessions, their marching orders were to spend more time in sentences to build up that fluency piece before moving onto paragraphs.
In our next follow up, which was a few weeks after, they slowed down the pace a little bit. And this young man was ready to move to paragraphs and felt like a writing expert. He felt it was easier for him and that he didn’t have to think so much about his handwriting.
And that’s the kind of handwriting progress we want! We don’t want our kids to have to think about the handwriting so much.
But if we skip steps with them, even if they’re older, fourth grade, fifth grade, etc., they will get stuck.
If you’ve watched any of my other videos about preschoolers, I always talk about not skipping steps because it will show up. It could show up in the future.
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