by Matthew Tyler Funk

Created on: October 14, 2010

The best thing teachers can do to encourage great penmanship in their pupils is to provide hours of practice time. Often it is nothing more than a lack of practice writing by hand which throws off a student's or an entire class' penmanship.

In the lives of modern young people, the use of computers is having a major impact on handwriting skills. Students have come to rely on typing far more than ever before in the past, and as a result, penmanship is forced to compete directly with this new technological trend. Generally the trend is towards worse handwriting in students, due to lack of familiarity with writing by hand and an over-familiarity with typing.

There are several effective approaches teachers can take to correct or treat this atrophy of handwriting skills. However, what all the approaches have in common is that they aim to build familiarity with handwriting and to develop pupils' skills through practice.

One common method is to allow the submission of handwritten class and homework assignments only. However, some school administrations may make this difficult because most administrations have made public statements embracing technology in the classroom. One way to get around this may be to point out that it saves the school money on electricity and maintenance to require the students not to use computers in class.

Another approach that I have found effective is - if you have the class time to spare - to regularly devote segments of class to the completion of hand-written in-class assignments. If class time is lacking, extra homework can be assigned with hand-writing in mind. The good thing about teaching hand-writing though, is that it can be taught through practice as a secondary subject, while the students are simultaneously learning history, science or almost any other subject, then can also be practicing great handwriting skills.

It is often helpful also to get students engaged in their own learning by giving them a desire for the knowledge or skill the teacher is offering. So for example, a teacher may regularly assign visual projects to be presented to the class on a biweekly basis or so, and one of the regular rules may be that no typed copy may appear anywhere on the project. This forces the students to publicly expose their poor handwriting skills, and motivates many to take an active interest in developing more pleasant penmanship.

Another common technique with a class filled with pupils with poor penmanship is to grade handwriting on tests and papers on a scale from one to ten, and to make the grade equal to 10% of the project or test grade; the rest of the test or project accounting for only 90% of the grade. This can be done for the entire class or for specific students on an as-needed basis, depending on the severity of the problem within the class.

There are endless methods for teaching great handwriting, but the successful teaching techniques generally revolve around getting the pupils to practice. Practice is the core of every skill teacher's lesson plan, no matter what the skill.

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