Reply to 2nd Grade teacher reply saying she has no resources

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]
Why is there no class on teaching penmanship during teacher training? That's ridiculous. I'm sure teachers in Europe are taught now to teach handwriting which is why they don't have this problem. [/quote]

I went through teacher training many, many years ago.  FWIW,  I recall very limited training on this.  It is not rocket science.  For teaching manuscript, it is pretty much top to bottom and left to right.  We also worked on grip (this was in first grade.)

I taught before copy machines were in great use.  I would take first grade paper and put green dots on the top lines and red dots on the bottom lines in order to teach the kids that the straight lines go from top to bottom.  When I taught the specific letters, I also used red and green dots on the pages.  It was time consuming, but helpful.

There were also some little rhymes, etc. that we used for teaching the letters--but it was mostly just practice.  I would ccompare the lines to a road--the dotted lines in the middle.  Some letters take up the whole road--and others must stay on their own side of the road.  And, a few (like "y" were allowed to go on the "sidewalks"........this sounds silly, but that's pretty much how it was taught in those days.

Bottom line: practice, practice, practice.  There is not magic bullet.  I have heard good things about "Handwriting without Tears" and I had a colleague who loved Denilian (sp?).

Occasionally, there is a child who has a learning issue with handwriting--but, mostly it is the kids who are in a hurry who have trouble with it.  (I parented one of those.  I taught handwriting to kids for years, but couldn't do it with my own DS..He grew up, graduated from college, has a decent job--and, his handwriting still looks like chicken scratch!)

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