Students must be able to produce legible and fluent text when completing classwork and for exam purposes. Some students, however, present with handwriting difficulties in secondary school. When these are significant, intervention may be necessary or alternatives to handwriting may be offered (e.g. use of a word processor). Little is known about…

Purpose: Children with dyslexia often have related writing difficulties. In the simple view of writing model, high-quality writing depends on good transcription skills, working memory, and executive function--all of which can be difficult for children with dyslexia and result in poor spelling and low overall writing quality. In this article, we…

This article reports the results from a study investigating the effects of a discipline-specific reading and writing intervention (I3C/PROVE IT!) with fourth and fifth graders. Participants included 237 students with writing difficulties (WD) from an initial pool of 608 upper elementary school students in a larger study. Teachers and students were…

Many students exhibit a special type of learning disability in writing. Yet, teachers spend relatively little time helping children and youth with severe writing difficulties overcome their struggles or prevent emerging problems from becoming more severe. A major reason for this lack of attention is that many educators feel overburdened by the…

This article focuses on two main issues. On the one hand, it deals with early prevention of literacy difficulties. On the other hand, it deals with the same issue once pupils already present serious difficulties in reading and writing. Consequently, this paper has two main aims. Firstly, it aims to show teachers that, in order to carry out…

Students with writing difficulties and learning disabilities struggle with many aspects of the writing process, including use of sentence-level skills. This literature review summarizes results from 19 published articles that used single-case or group-experimental and quasi-experimental designs to investigate effects of intervention on the…

Academic positive practice was used to correct errors of cursive letter writing in three third graders. Following each writing error, students correctly formed each incorrect letter 20 times. Students demonstrated improvement over baseline levels of performance. (Author/DB)

The STAR (Stop, Think, Ask, Recite) strategy was developed to help a kindergarten student write numerals. The child was encouraged to recite a "saying" while he formed each numeral. For example, to make a "5," the child would say "the man went down the street, around the corner, and his hat blew off." (JDD)

Described are strategies that help writing-disabled students improve handwriting skills (e.g., provide models, use prompting and fading techniques, teach proofing skills) and strategies that allow students to circumvent handwriting problems so they can concentrate on the subject matter content (e.g., typewriters, computers, oral reports and…

To minimize the negative impact of handwriting and spelling difficulties of students with learning disabilities, it is proposed that explicit and systematic instruction, as well as incidental or natural learning approaches be used to maximize the development of these two basic writing tools. These approaches are examined. (Author/CR)

Contrary to the beliefs of many, right-handedness is not a single factor existing in almost all people, with a few exceptions termed left-handed: neither extreme exists independently of the other. During the first 4 years of life there is a period of fluctuation between right and left-handed dominance. Statistics and findings vary in determining…

Students with disabilities often experience particular difficulties with handwriting, and these problems can hinder their development both in school and in postsecondary settings. This paper addresses three issues: (1) the possibility of a prejudicial and potentially lasting first impression, based on the individual's handwriting; (2) the lack of…

Fifteen learning-disabled students, aged 8-12 years, showed marked improvement in their story writing when they used a word processor as compared to handwritten stories. Children with severe spelling problems made fewer errors in their word-processed stories. Reluctant writers tended to write longer word-processed stories compared to handwritten…

Suggests several strategies for producing fluent, legible penmanship for both left and right handed students. Observes that reading readiness skills can be reinforced through handwriting instruction. Describes several physical considerations for successful writing, and notes the modifications needed for left handed writers. (MM)

Discusses difficulties of Persian speakers, including literacy problems in learning English because of differences in script, and offers suggestions for solving some of the problems in handwriting, spelling, form-filling, punctuation, and reading. (LB)