Creations In Education

HANDWRITING TIPS ✏️

You know reading fluency is important to develop a student’s overall reading ability, but did you know HANDWRITING fluency is a thing!? 🤚🏼 it’s a very important ‘thing’ that research shows is linked to a student’s overall academic achievement!

Handwriting (while seemingly ‘simple’) requires a range of skills including:

🖐🏼 Hand-Eye Coordination
✍🏼 Fine Motor Control
💪🏼 Muscle Memory
👀 Visual Perception
📝 Bilateral Coordination + more...

Keepin’ it simple... here’s some things to keep in mind next time you teach handwriting! 👇🏼

✍🏼 Letter formation: explicitly teach and use metalanguage of letter names, features and the sounds associated with each including starting and finishing points for each letter.

✍🏼 Develop visual-motor memory by viewing, analysing and modelling correct letter formation. Focus on learning the motor pattern FIRST through air writing/gel bags/shaving cream before translating this skill onto paper.

✍🏼 Graphological Approach: introduce, teach and practise letters groups by ‘movement’ e.g. clockwise letters, diagonal letters, stick letters.

✍🏼 Phonological Approach: introduce, teach and practise letters grouped so similar looking letters (b/d) are taught APART to avoid confusion (see ‘the Carnine Order’).

✍🏼 Integrate with phonics👂🏼

✍🏼 Explicit focus for each lesson: e.g. letter formation, revision of letters with similar movement patterns, letter size.

✍🏼 Use think alouds to emphasise metalanguage. Invite students to air-trace the letters and provide non-examples to identify common errors in letter formation and sizing.

✍🏼 Integrate across the curriculum, specifically during modelled & joint writing.

✍🏼 Pre-Assess to identify student handwriting legibility, spacing, shape, size, slope (and letter knowledge).

Practise, practise, practise! In a highly over crowded curriculum, handwriting can be overlooked... but through developing your students handwriting skills and automaticity, this fluency will support them in other critical areas of their learning! 🤚🏼 🧠

Do you find it difficult to fit in time for explicit handwriting? 😪

📲 TAG A TEACHER who might like these tips ✍🏼

Want EXCITEMENT about learning new vocab? TRY THIS! 👇🏼

1️⃣ Explicitly teach pronunciation + part of speech.

2️⃣ Provide a student-friendly definition.

💡 If it has multiple meanings in different contexts, explicitly teach your students this too!

3️⃣ Provide a visual to support understanding and multiple examples of how to use the word in context.

4️⃣ Students verbalise a sentence using the word in the correct context (this is great formative assessment and allows you to clarify misconceptions).

5️⃣ Provide non-examples of the word to develop deeper understandings of how to use the word.

✏️ Get students involved! If the word is a…

💡 NOUN: you might get students to draw where they’d see it!

💡 ADJECTIVE: take “pictures” with their hands of things in the classroom that fit that adjective e.g. find things that are ‘slim’.

💡Play Pictionary and have students draw something that fits the adjective e.g. a student might draw a laptop as it can be ‘slim’.

💡VERB: CHARADES! Get the kids acting out different situations where you may be ‘doing’ the word described.

6️⃣ Identify parts of speech. Is it a noun, verb or adjective?

7️⃣ Explicitly teach morphology. Research shows that morphology instruction is associated with improved reading and spelling, and determining the meaning of unfamiliar words!

8️⃣ Have student DRAW a picture that represents the word in their own mind and add a sentence that contains the word so solidify its meaning.

9️⃣ Cumulative review. It doesn’t stop there! Students need opportunities to practise and review learned words!

This may look like…

💬 Quick definition review “what does ____ mean?”
🔎 Games: iSpy, charades, vocabulary bingo, articulate
📝 Story challenge: use at least ‘x’ of your vocab words in a story.

👀 Keep newly learned words on display to students can USE them in their writing, and you can quickly point to and prompt students with questions to remind them of their learned vocabulary.

E.g. “Before you go to recess, tell me something that is… *insert adjective*”

💡 Hope this gives you some new, easy to implement ideas for your classroom!

🔗 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-of-the-Day-Vocabulary-Booklet-Bundle-8126923

Published writing = AMAZING display!

🔗 BOOK TEMPLATE: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Publishing-Paper-Writing-Book-Craftivity-5675161

Wait until the end to see these close up 😍

Top tip; colour code for EASY classroom organisation! 📚

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Do you teach the FLOSS (or FlOSZ) spelling rule? 🦷

It’s one of my favourite to teach!

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I AM OUT THE DOOR AT CONTRACT TIME EVERY DAY! 🚪

HERE ARE SOME TIME SAVING TIPS ⏰

1. MARK AS YOU GO: Walk around as students are working and tick and stamp their work as you go. Not only will this save you having piles of marking at the end of the day, but also allows you to identify any misconceptions students may have and the opportunity to provide timely feedback!

2. FEEDBACK STATION: A tray or a trolley that has your most used stamps, stickers and feedback slips will make it easy to grab and go when marking!

3. FEEDBACK SLIPS: while these take time to prepare in the beginning of the year, I believe these save time when writing out written feedback to students and they’re bright to grab student attention🌈

4. ONLY MARK WHAT IS IMPORTANT: Students won’t absorb everything you mark, edit or correct on their work... especially if there is a lot of ‘mistakes’ or room for improvement. Focus on the learning intention for the lesson and ONLY MARK THIS! 🎯 This saves you time, but also provides a targeted focus that aligns with what the purpose of the lesson is. Too much “correcting” or RED PEN ❌ can be extremely demotivating for students, so focus on marking what is most important 📝

5. PEER MARKING: I used to do this to save time, but I honestly AVOID 🚫 this to avoid peer embarrassment and anxiety that comes from students bringing attention to another student’s errors or mistakes. Save your students potential humiliation from “is this answer wrong!?” or “what if they got none right?” by using the tips above and marking work yourself. I do believe peer ‘marking’ can be used in the classroom as a time saver, particularly for providing feedback, but a positive classroom culture needs to be developed and students need to be taught how to effectively give and receive constructive feedback so they can be learning resources for each other, not just used as ‘markers’ to save you time.

Next time you’re marking, remember this... ‘improve the learner, not the work’. Is the time and effort you put into scribbling all over your students’ work going to help improve them as a learner? If not... how else can you use your time to do this? 🤔

😩 Do you find marking time consuming? Try these! ⬇️

🔗FEEDBACK SLIPS: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Feedback-Slips-5214298

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👉🏼 Recounts
👉🏼 Narratives
👉🏼 Expositions
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👉🏼 Explanations
👉🏼 Procedures
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👉🏼 Book Reviews
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