Dear Reader,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about why spelling still matters in a world of spellcheck, speech-to-text, and AI.

Well, apparently I’m on a mission to defend all the old-fashioned things…because today I want to talk about handwriting. 😂

We have keyboards. We have tablets. We have speech-to-text.

So does handwriting really matter anymore?

Yes, of COURSE it does! 💯

And here's why: Handwriting is not about beautiful penmanship or perfect letter formation. It’s about automaticity and functional use.

I've been thinking about this a LOT lately because I'm taking a fantastic workshop on dysgraphia. It's actually designed primarily for occupational therapists, but I keep finding myself thinking:

YES! This is exactly what I see with many of my dyslexic students!

Here's the key idea:

🗝️ Just like spelling, handwriting has to be sufficiently automatic before it can be functional.

Think about everything we're asking a student to do when they write a sentence.

They have to think about:

• what they want to say;
• how to organize those ideas;
• which words to use;
• how to spell those words;
• capitalization and punctuation;
• AND how to physically form each letter.

That's a LOT. For a proficient writer, letter formation requires very little conscious thought. You decide to write a b, and your hand makes a b. For some of our students, though, it isn't automatic at all.

They're thinking:

Where do I start?
Does the circle come first or the stick?
Wait... is that b or d?
Which way does this one go?

It is EXHAUSTING! 😫 Plus, every bit of attention devoted to letter formation is attention they can't spend thinking about their ideas.

Sound familiar?

It's exactly what we talked about with spelling a couple of weeks ago. When spelling takes too much conscious effort, writing suffers.

The same thing happens when handwriting takes too much conscious effort.

I wish I could wave my magic wand and ensure that every child learned proper letter formation in Kindergarten. 🪄 Sadly, I can't. Many of my students -- even high schoolers! -- still struggle with inefficient letter formation and reversals.

🚩 Persistent reversals tell me to take a closer look at automaticity.

Yes, reversals can be developmentally normal when children are first learning to write. However, when a student repeatedly hesitates, reverses a letter, erases it, rewrites it, or has to stop and consciously think about which direction it goes, that letter formation isn't automatic yet.

Telling them to “remember which way the b goes” isn't enough. I want to help them develop a consistent motor pattern so their hand eventually knows what to do without all that thinking.

That's exactly why I created my Letter Reversal Activities.

Instead of simply asking students to look at the correct letter over and over, the activities combine consistent verbal cues with tracing and repeated letter formation to help students establish the correct pattern. For kids who struggle with handwriting automaticity, it can take a surprising amount of explicit, consistent practice before an efficient letter-formation pattern becomes automatic. That's why these mazes have so much practice built right in!

So, yes, even in this day and age, handwriting still matters enormously. And I don't mean that kids have to have perfect penmanship. That would be nice, but it's not the goal. What we want is handwriting that doesn't get in the way of written expression.

When students don't have to devote so much attention to forming letters, they have more cognitive energy available for what we actually want them thinking about: their ideas. ❤️

If you'd like me to share more about handwriting, hit reply and let me know! I'm learning so much about dysgraphia that I have a ton of great tips to share (and don't even get me started on the benefits of cursive!). If this topic isn't relevant to you, though, let me know that too, and I'll opt you out of the conversation.

P.S. Because we can never have too many great teaching tips, I'd like to introduce you to Lucky Little Learners. They have a fantastic newsletter packed with practical ideas and resources for elementary teachers. I'm partnering with them this week, and I thought of you guys immediately because I know so many of you teach in the elementary grades. Take a look below! 👇

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