Student writing

Supporting handwriting

teaching practice
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For student year

Foundation to Year 6

Helps students to

  • Build handwriting skill
  • Maintain motivation

Helps teachers to

  • Support handwriting

Summary

Handwriting is a complex skill.  Students need to frequently practice  to become proficient. Many learning activities require handwriting skills to record information and ideas. Some students may continue to require support with their handwriting throughout their schooling. 

In the first Australian educational needs analysis of students on the autism spectrum, students reported that handwriting was in the top 10 difficulties that they experienced at school. In particular,

  • being neat
  • being quick enough to keep up.

Supporting students to develop handwriting in the early years, including those on the autism spectrum, can be particularly challenging. These challenges can continue despite years of practice and intervention (Broun, 2009).

The Australian Curriculum requires student handwriting to be assessed up until Year 3. In this practice we provide information on how you can support students to develop their handwriting and adjustments you can make to the Australian Curriculum. This practice also includes a series of video clips featuring Helen McLennan - an occupational therapist and teacher.

Watch this video to learn more about this practice. 

Duration: 02:38

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers related to this practice

1.6 - strategies to support the full participation of students with disability

2.5 - literacy and numeracy strategies

4.1 - support student participation

For further information, see Australian Professional Standards for Teachers AITSL page

Handwriting is a complex skill which requires automaticity and legibility.

  • Automaticity is the ability to automatically recall how to form a letter when  . This can impact the speed and length of a student’s writing as they may take longer remembering how to start writing a particular letter.
  • Legibility is the ability to write letters that have consistent sizing and spacing, and to understand what has been written.

Handwriting challenges

In this video Helen talks about some of the handwriting challenges. 

Duration: 01:35

 

In this video Helen talks about automaticity and legibility and what this means.

Duration:  02:22

Building Blocks of Handwriting

There are many skills which contribute to handwriting including fine-motor skills, visual-motor perception and motivation. Helen McLennan explains the impact of these building blocks when handwriting.

 

Increase your understanding of the building blocks required for handwriting.

Duration: 01:36

 

In this video Helen discusses why we need to address handwriting.

Duration: 03:39

The importance of practice

Despite the impact of these building blocks on handwriting, research recommends focusing on direct handwriting instruction and practice rather than underlying skills such as general fine motor activities. Technology can support handwriting skills but it should not completely replace physical handwriting practice.

This video explains more, and offers two strategies for handwriting.

Duration 06:26

Related Practices

A child working on a laptop
Use technology to support written expression
TEACHING PRACTICE
For student years
Years 3 to 6
Years 7 to 9
Years 7 to 12
Helps students to
  • express ideas
  • develop written expression
View details of this practice

This practice is from the core research project

Learning Cycle

Practice cycle

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Evidence

This practice was developed as part of the Overcoming written difficulties project. More information about the evidence informing this practice is available on the project page.