Handwriting Fluency and Letter Practice

Handwriting fluency is acheived after students have extensive handwriting practice and they learn to write letters automatically. Handwriting sessions often include workbooks and/or worksheets in order for students to expereince practicing writing the letters over and over.  The handwriting practice can result in fluent, legible, and functional handwriting speed for students. A recent study took a closer look at what is included in handwriting workbooks.

Frequency of Letters in Handwriting Workbooks

The study was published in Reading and Writing. Since previous research indicates that children’s abilities to write letters automatically was linked to academic achievement, the researchers wanted to investigate the frequency that children are presented different opportunities to write individual block letters in handwriting workbooks.

A collection of 11 handwriting workbooks that contained 31,164 letterswere analyzed for case sensitive letter frequency.

Results of the Study on Handwriting Fluency and Letter Frequency

The researchers were concerned that children’s handwriting workbooks may not be designed to promote letter writing fluency and automaticity across the letters of the English alphabet.

The results of the study indicated that:

• not all letters are represented equally in workbooks.
• Lowercase letters (n = 24,899) were more prevalent than uppercase letters (n = 6265) and varied by letter.
• children’s opportunities for writing letters in workbooks were related to letter frequencies in children’s picture books (.938 for lowercase, .638 for uppercase).

 

Conclusion on Handwriting Fluency and Practice

In conclusion, the researchers stated that just because a letter occurs less frequently than another one in the English language, it does not mean that the development of automaticity in writing that letter is any less important.

When handwriting workbooks do not offer children with roughly equivalent amounts of practice with all letters of the alphabet, those traditional handwriting workbooks may have mistakenly provided children with too little practice with low frequency letters.

The researchers recommend additional research addressing how letter frequency influences the development of handwriting automaticity.

Reference

Fears, N. E., Walsh, L. E., & Lockman, J. J. (2020). Letter writing instruction for children: Case-sensitive letter frequencies in children’s handwriting workbooks. Reading and Writing, 33(1), 171-185.

Resources to Practice Handwriting that Include ALL LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET EQUALLY

Want to practice all letters of the alphabet equally? The following two packets include all the upper case and lower case letters to improve handwriting fluency.

I Can Write Uppercase Letters is a HUGE digital packet that includes a workbook, signs, flash cards, charts, and a certificate. This bundle includes formation guidelines for writing all 26 uppercase letters, fun pictures, sight words, simple sentences, formation guidelines, interesting games,  and a large variety of content that you won’t find with other handwriting worksheets!

I Can Write Lowercase Letters is a HUGE digital packet that includes a workbook, signs, flash cards, charts, and a certificate. This bundle includes formation guidelines for writing all 26 lowercase letters, fun pictures, sight words, simple sentences, formation guidelines, interesting games,  and a large variety of content that you won’t find with other handwriting worksheets!