The other day I was talking to a mother at our school who's son is doing well except she was lamenting his handwriting.
I told her how the 45 or so minutes a month my daughter had 1 on 1 tutoring during the summer (5 days a week) her teacher focused on writing her letters. I believe they almost completely used that time to work on letter formation throughout that month.
In the end I didnt even recognize her handwriting. I thought someone else had written that.
The teacher used techniques like the "bat comes before the ball" to make a letter "b" and my daughter said they went outside and played a bit of baseball before coming back to the writing.
It used to be standard practice in schools to teach letter formation. They spent no time at all on it in our Catholic school and yet she was expected to write well (with no guidance). I suppose as a parent I was supposed to have taught her this? Yet I have smaller children at home and other things to do and what is school for anyway if I'm supposed to homeschool her we would have set our lives up that way. (A rant by me- sorry).
So another mother and I were talking and I knew that she was frustrated with her son's handwriting. I mentioned what had worked for us but I think I forgot to mention that I insisted that my daughter be tested for dysgraphia during our IEP process (and of course I was right, she has it).
Here is what I'm realizing: it was very important to have had that written into our IEP.
