Teachers' knowledge impacts their practices in classrooms. While considerable research has sought to understand teachers' broad emergent literacy knowledge, less is known about the specific knowledge teachers hold regarding early writing. The present study engaged 66 diverse early childhood teachers in five Head Start programs across two states to…

Writing is a complex process, and this complexity poses particular challenges when researchers and teachers approach the task of analysing young students' writing samples. This paper outlines a program of research undertaken to develop a writing analysis tool. The tool is designed to map shifts over time in the range of skills and competencies…

The famed playwright Harold Pinter, having just been introduced as a very good writer, was once asked by a six-year-old boy if he could do a "w." The author suspects that "w" was a difficult letter for this young man, and he judged the writing capability of others accordingly. This student's assumption--that being a "good…

During this decade there have been numerous efforts to identify instructional practices that improve students' writing. These include "Reading Next" (Biancarosa and Snow, 2004), which provided a set of instructional recommendations for improving writing, and "Writing Next" (Graham and Perin, 2007) and "Writing to Read" (Graham and Hebert, 2010),…

The majority of high-stakes tests from elementary school through postsecondary education include the timed impromptu essay as a measure of writing performance. For adolescents with writing disorders, this type of evaluation often presents a significant barrier. The purpose of the current study was twofold. First, we investigated the influence of…

The instructional applicability of a variety of handwriting assessment techniques is examined. Informal procedures, handwriting scales, and systematic methods used in recent research methodology are critically reviewed. For each class of assessment techniques, relevant information on validity, reliability, and utility is presented. (Author/CL)

This project is a historical and topical search into handwriting evaluation. It includes a statement of the problem; a justification; definitions; a bibliography listed in historical order with annotations on 36 books and articles; and a summary and evaluation of the literature. The conclusion of the paper discusses the importance of being aware…

The act of writing presents difficulties for 10-30% of elementary school children. This study's objectives were to compare the abilities of digitizer-based evaluation of the handwriting process and conventional evaluation of the handwriting product to discriminate between children with proficient and dysgraphic handwriting. Copied and dictated…

Pointing out that teachers and supervisors need to study, analyze, and synthesize diverse issues in the teaching of handwriting, this paper explores several relevant issues. The following issues are discussed: (1) whether handwriting ought to be taught as a separate subject; (2) the conflict between the behaviorism approach--which utilizes precise…

Discusses various informal measures of writing proficiency. (FL)

This paper examines the complexity of teaching handwriting to meet the requirements of Great Britain's National Curriculum. Three major questions are considered: (1) what should be taught? (2) what are the teaching objectives? and (3) how will pupil progress be assessed? (JDD)

This monograph provides an historical overview of handwriting assessment, followed by suggestions for informally assessing student handwriting errors and implementing improvement strategies. The monograph specifically addresses: (1) research on handwriting; (2) a rationale for remediation of handwriting errors; (3) techniques for evaluating…

This article describes measures for process assessment of handwriting fluency, spelling, and composition of students with learning or behavioral disabilities. It then discusses common writing problems for these students, and specific process and strategy interventions. (DB)

Despite predictions that handwriting would become obsolete in the age of technology, it is still considered an important skill today. Examples are cited of individuals who improved their understanding of themselves and of particular concepts after writing about their thoughts and feelings. Frequently, dyslexic students are denied access to this…

Designed for teachers and tutors, the handbook discusses setting up a cross-age tutoring program. Topics include tutor responsibilities; the role of resource teachers; tutor contracts; specific relationship-building and tutoring techniques; ideas for tutoring in handwriting; and techniques for tutoring in reading, spelling, and arithmetic. The…