Strategies to Resolve Letter Reversals

Our last post looked at why children reverse letters when they write and how proper and consistent letter formation can help with this. Today, we share some other ways to help when children reverse their letters.

The "bed" Strategy
This simple strategy for recognizing and writing b and d give students an image to hold in their memories and a gesture they can make with their hands. Show your child the picture of the bed, emphasizing the /b/ sound when you point to the b and the /d/ sound when you point to the d. Show him how to hold his hands to make his own bed image. When he is writing and comes to a word that uses either b or d, ask him to look at the image (or, better yet, close his eyes and see it in his mind) or hold his hands in position to remind him which letter to use.

Recruit the Gross Motor System
Writing very large letters/numbers employs the gross motor system, strengthening a child’s memory for the sequences of movements needed to form letter and numbers. Kids think it’s fun, too! Using a wet sponge on a sidewalk, sidewalk chalk, a dry erase marker or chalk, challenge your child to write individual letters, numbers, or words that use problematic letters. You could also try “sky-writing,” in which a child uses her finger or whole hand to “write” in the air. Be sure she follows the sequence of motions she’d use to form the letters and numbers if she were using a pencil.

Make It Tactile
Feeling different textures can be useful in learning letter and number formation by underscoring the tactile experience of learning (rather than the largely visual experience that most children get). Your child can trace letters in a sand tray, on a piece of sandpaper, or on the carpet. He might also “write” in a layer of shaving cream spread on a table.

Another way to make letter formation tactile is to help your child form letters and numbers from clay or pipe cleaners. You could even use cookie dough and bake your child’s work – yum!

Make it Playful
This will sound familiar if you read our sight word posts. Your child might enjoy guessing games that require her to identify letters and numbers by how their shapes feel. A simple way to do this is to trace letters or on her back and ask her to say what has been written. She can also trace letters on an adult’s back for them to guess.

Another guessing game requires some set-up: Glue foam or wooden letters or numbers on pieces of card stock and add a line for the letter/number to sit on with a line of glue or puff paint (so that your child can feel which way the letter should be oriented). The cards can be put into a bag or box. With her eyes closed, ask your child to draw one out, feel it, and say which number/letter she is holding.

Letter Reversals

We are continuing our series of posts by Beth Guadagni, M.A., who teaches students with dyslexia in Colorado. Today, Beth looks at what happens -- and what teachers and parents can do -- when a child reverses letters. 

Most dyslexic kids reverse letters (and even whole words) when reading and writing, but so do most young learners. Parents frequently panic when they see a child flipping b's and d's, assuming that this is a sure-fire sign of dyslexia. More likely, the child simply needs more practice and better practice. Multi-sensory strategies (learning opportunities that stimulate a child’s auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic senses along with their vision) are extraordinarily useful in giving kids the practice they need to get comfortable with directionality.

First, let’s take a look at why reversals happen. During a young child’s life, he learns that an object seen from one side is the same object seen from another side. Whether he’s standing on the left or right of the blue armchair in the living room, it’s still the same armchair, even if the image appears to be reversed when he moves from one side to the other. When he begins school, he has to unlearn that concept; applied to letters and numbers, directionality can really change things.

This ability to appreciate mirror images is really useful—in most settings. On the page, it presents problems. Here are some ideas for helping your child:

Letter Formation – It Matters!

Watch your young child as he is writing and insist that he form letters the same way every time. This is particularly important with b and d. Many parents and educators skip this step, thinking that as long as the letter looks right in the end, how the child wrote it isn’t important. This is far from true. Remember:

• To make a lowercase b, the child should write the line first, starting at the top and moving downward. The loop is added next, so the letter takes two separate strokes.
• To make a lowercase d, the child should write the loop first. Then, without lifting her pencil, she can sweep upward to form the line, then down again for the tail.

Why does this help a child stop making reversals? Following the same sequence of motions each time embeds letter-writing in muscle memory, so a child can store that information along with the physical appearance of a letter. This helps with writing and, believe it or not, reading, too.

We worked with a young boy whose insightful mother came up with a mnemonic to help him with b's and d's. When he wrote a b, he said “bat to the ball” to himself. The “bat” was the stem of the letter, which he had to write first. The “ball” was the loop. When he wrote a d, he said “dog to the door” to remind him to write the “dog” (the loop), then the “door” (the stem). This clever strategy marries the auditory and kinesthetic senses.

Resource: Handwriting Without Tears

If you’re worried about letter formation, we love Handwriting Without Tears. Its step-by-step instructions are easy enough for parents with no training in early education to follow at home.

National Handwriting Day

Thanks to the folks at the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association, tomorrow is “National Handwriting Day.” The date of January 23rd was chosen in honor of the birthday of John Hancock, whose name has become slang for a signature. Hancock was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, and his large and distinctive handwriting has become among the most famous in our nation's history.

The keystrokes being entered to write this blog serve as a reminder, however, that handwriting is arguably less crucial a skill than it once was. Nevertheless, as we discussed in a prior blog post, some research suggests that handwriting may assist in the learning process in a way that typing cannot. There are also certainly situations in which handwriting is the only available means of written communication, or even a note-to-self. Handwriting clarity thus serves as an important tool for conveying information as well as for keeping organized. Students with graphomotor difficulties often face a unique array of challenges across academic areas.

Occupational therapists can help struggling students to strengthen the abilities underlying effective handwriting as well as to use assistive devices such as unique pencil grip products. We at The Yellin Center tend to recommend skill building in conjunction with bypass strategies, and so advise that work-arounds such as speech-to-text software should be considered as well, in appropriate contexts. Fluency in capturing and expressing information is important for optimizing the amount of material available for processing and the quality of ideas that can be generated. Therefore, it behooves students to use strategies that will help this fluency in the short-term while building the handwriting skills that will help them later.

          Happy Handwriting Day! 

Low-Tech Assistive Technology

According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Assistive Technology (AT) is any “item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a child with a disability.” AT resources can be implemented to increase function in all areas of one’s life, including school, work,  home and in the community. Here at The Yellin Center, we evaluate students’ needs and provide strategies to amplify their abilities across all of these settings-not just school.

However, in our 21st century learning environments there is a common misconception that assistive tech is predominantly digital. Although there are a wealth of complex, innovative high-tech tools, assistive technology includes a range of low-tech resources as well. For example, in the late 80’s Sam Farber, the founder of OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, noticed that due to his wife’s arthritis she was having trouble using her peeler to skin potatoes. He decided to research and design a set of ergonomically-designed kitchen tools that anyone could use regardless of functional ability. Today OXO tools are sold in every major department store, and aren’t only used by people with physical limitations. Mr. Farber redesigned a common tool in such a way that anyone can use it; that is a true example of Universal Design.

Similar to how Mr. Farber made the kitchen accessible, there are a variety of low-tech tools designed to help make academic tasks accessible. For writing, alternative pencils such as the Twist and Write, or pencil grips, like Abilitations Egg Ohs or AbiliGrip, can greatly improve the writing process for students with fine and graphomotor challenges.

Abilitations Egg Ohs

Students with similar motor challenges may also benefit from using slant boards or raised lined paper, which is a modified version of traditional lined paper. Augmented paper can also be useful in math. Math Notes paper uses a raised, grid format to help students properly align their work, thus avoiding calculation errors. Tools are also available to assist students with the reading process. If a child has trouble tracking lines due to vision or attention challenges they may benefit from tools such as the Blue Trakker Reading Guide or a See-N-Read.

 

See-N-Read

Alternatively, enlarging the print of a book or using magnifying bar such as the Carson MagniBar can also aid students in the reading process.

Low-Tech tools also help students participate in non-academic tasks as well. For example, a student may not have the hand strength to work traditional scissors, but there are a variety of self-opening models for students to use. Students with gross motor challenges may struggle to raise their hand to respond to a question. Instead, they could use a simple buzzer on their desk. Communication can be facilitated using a pictorial system such as the Flip n’ Talk, which helps students convey their needs without having to use words. AT can also help students with self-regulation and attention challenges. Some students may require fidget toys, or special seats, such as the Sissle SITFIT, to allow them to quietly move without distracting themselves or their peers. Alternatively students may find it helpful to roll their feet quietly on a foot roller, or that a weighted lap pad helps calm them.

So, although edTech is a growing industry, not every accommodation needs to be complex or expensive. Sometimes, like the OXO peeler, it is the simple resources are merely a modification of a traditional tool that can make all the difference. The empowering nature of low-tech strategies is that they can often be used by every student, not just those with learning differences.

Benefits of Learning to Write by Hand

We were fascinated by a recent piece in The New York Times about the controversy over handwriting instruction. The article thoughtfully summarizes work by neuroscientists demonstrating that learning to write by hand plays an important role in a number of developing neural pathways. Handwriting appears to have a positive impact on reading, idea generation when writing, and memory formation when taking notes in class. Keyboarding does not appear to have the same impact. Interestingly, manuscript and cursive writing each seem to provide different benefits, and research indicates that learning each style of writing leads to greater cognitive engagement than using only one approach. At a time when many schools are abandoning cursive instruction, this finding is particularly provocative.

As our world becomes ever-more reliant on technology, it is important to develop a true understanding of the impact that writing by hand has on the learning process. In our practice, we speak with many parents who are unsure whether to belabor handwriting development when their kids genuinely struggle. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply transition to typing since that’s what they’ll use when they’re adults, they wonder? And, as the Times piece points out, the nearly ubiquitous Common Core standards suggest that children learn to hand write legible letters only in kindergarten and first grade; after that, the focus is shifted to keyboarding skills.

Here at the Yellin Center, we often find ourselves considering “the genius of and versus the tyranny of or.” Simply supplying children with a list of accommodations (e.g. either do it this way or learn it that way) is often limiting; a better strategy is establishing a system of accommodations that works in conjunction with a carefully crafted instructional plan (e.g. do this and that, too). Some students need help with a mechanical aspect of a task to complete classwork and should be given workarounds to get through particular tasks. But that doesn’t mean those mechanics shouldn’t be practiced at a separate time. For example, a child who struggles to sound out words certainly needs to develop those critical decoding skills. However, it’s also important that she listen to texts that match her intellectual level so she can practice her comprehension skills and build a love of literature. Learning to decode and listening to texts is a much better approach than only working on either decoding instruction or using audiobooks.

Children should learn how to write by hand, but if they are having difficulty with letter formation they should be given “bypass strategies” like having someone scribe for them, using speech-to-text software, or keyboarding, so their capacity for developing rich written output is not hijacked by their weak graphomotor function. It is essential, however, that kids continue developing handwriting “off-line”; as their mastery and automaticity grows, handwriting can be brought online and integrated into the writing process gradually.

To Type or Not to Type? For Young Kids, It’s Not a Question

Adults of a certain age (in this case, over, say, 40) would notice a very startling difference between the college lectures of their university days and the lectures of today if they sat in on a class. Sure, some professors might use PowerPoint presentations instead of the whiteboard (or chalkboard, for those much older than 40). But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking, instead, about the laptop revolution. Students who take notes on paper with actual pens are fewer with each passing year. Instead, the professor’s voice floats over a sea of muffled bursts of staccato as students frantically type their notes into word processing programs (or, to be fair, chat with their friends on social media).

coolabanana/Flickr

For some students, being freed from a pencil and paper is a lifesaver. Kids with graphomotor difficulties and real spelling problems benefit enormously from keyboarding and access to all the editing tools that are included in word processing programs. And by college, or even high school, most students can type much more quickly than they can write. But for the average student, is making the switch from hand writing to typing a good idea? A recent article in Scientific American unequivocally urges young children to step away from the keyboard.

The article discusses a series of studies that examine the relationship between handwriting and literacy tasks, like learning letters, spelling, and writing quality discourse. Highlighted findings include:

• Subjects who hand wrote foreign letters were better able to recognize those letters later as they endeavored to learn them.
• More brain activity was measured in subjects who looked at letters they had learned to hand write than in subjects who had studied the same letters by typing them. Interestingly, activity was found in both visual and motor areas of the brains of the former group.
• Legible, automatic handwriting in young children was the single best predictor of spelling ability and quality and quantity of writing generated in written compositions when those same children grew older.

It seems that there are many good arguments for developing handwriting, even in the digital age. Here at The Yellin Center, we notice that children who don’t use systematic patterns of pencil strokes to form letters tend to produce sentences and paragraphs of lower quality; the act of forming letters seems to sap their cognitive resources too much to come up with strong sentences, choose good vocabulary, and remember the rules of written mechanics. We encourage teachers and parents of young children to scrutinize a child’s letter formation, not just the legibility and uniformity of the letters that end up on the page. If it is determined that a young child forms letters slowly and laboriously, instructional programs such as Handwriting Without Tears can be enormously helpful. On the other hand, older students—third grade and up, or so—may be better off learning to keyboard quickly.

Little research exists on handwriting versus typing in older students and adults, but Teachers College professor Stephen Peverly notes that his students, especially after learning about handwriting’s role in memory and knowledge acquisition, tend to leave their laptops in their bags when they come to class.

Getting Ready for School

Anyone who has walked into a store, turned on a television, or opened a newspaper over the past several weeks has been bombarded with the message -- school is about to begin and it's time to think about school supplies.

Rebecca Kohn

We've written several blogs about this subject over the past few years, and thought it might be time to look at them again. We were please to see that they are still timely, and that the products recommended and the strategies we suggest remain helpful.

Helpful Apps

Whether your student is an advanced math scholar in need of a low-cost version of a graphing calculator, or a beginning reader who will enjoy a "kiddie Kindle", take a look at our blog on Apps for Students.

School Supplies

We've got recommendations for low tech items, like folders, binders, and pen and pencil holders for students who need help with graphomotor issues.

Tips for College Students

We have a number of suggestions for college students, including the Livescribe pen, which turns spoken words, such as lectures, into computer compatible notes. We have an entire blog post on this tool, which we often recommend to students with challenges with handwriting, memory, or organization.

We have also written about products and strategies specifically for college freshmen, including how to manage medication, when to apply for accommodations, and how to file papers. Our favorite tip for college students -- and one that is useful for families and for younger students as well -- is the white board. Whether it is set up in a dorm room, in the bedroom of a high school student,  in the family kitchen, or by the front door, a large white board is a terrific organizational tool. Try it for listing items to be taken to school or work, to track long and short term projects, and to allow family members (or roommates) to share messages. Many of these boards are magnetic; this will allow you to use magnetic clips to keep urgent papers, notes, and receipts readily at hand.

Having the right tools -- whether high tech or low -- will help every student get off to a good start.

Authentic Writing Opportunities

Most students would benefit from extra practice with writing. Even informal writing can really boost skills by helping kids get more comfortable shaping letters, searching for words, and composing sentences - but many students find it hard to get motivated. They may wonder why they have to write three sentences explaining why they liked a book or a summary of their history reading assignment. Writing for authentic reasons, however, can be motivating to students because they can easily see the purpose, and luckily there are plenty of “real world” reasons to write!

We hope the ideas below will get the kids in your life on the 'write' track!

Note: While it’s tempting to allow students to type everything, younger students would probably benefit most from writing by hand when they practice. For extra motivation, try pens with colored or sparkly ink, thin-tipped markers, or pencils with a child’s favorite character on the side.

List-Making
For younger children or those who need help with handwriting, helping to make the grocery list a parent will use in the store can be a very motivating experience. Kids can also make lists of gifts they might like to get for an approaching birthday or holiday, things they think the family should do on a planned trip, guests to invite to an upcoming party, or they can keep track of fun ideas to pass the hours during summer vacation.

Pen Pals
In the age of email, there’s nothing quite like opening a handwritten letter, and this is an experience many kids don’t have very often. Writing to a friend or family member – preferably around the same age as your child – in another place can be a fascinating experience, particularly when they are from another country or culture. Encourage your child to ask about popular foods, common modes of transportation, what their pen pal does to cope with the weather in their area, slang words, etc.

Postcards
Put your child in charge of communicating with the family during a trip or encourage them to tell friends about their vacation by helping them to buy and write postcards. This activity is great for kids who aren’t sure what to write when they sit down in front of a large blank page.

Book Reviews
Writing about books when one’s teacher is the audience may not seem like fun, but helping other kids make book decisions may motivate some kids to get typing. Check out the Spaghetti Book Club, a site that allows kids of all ages to write book reviews for other kids to read. Kids can review books on Amazon, too!

Giving Advice
This activity allows kids to use their personal expertise. Children can write letters or lists of tips for younger siblings or friends who are about to try something new that the child has experienced him/herself. A few possible topics: what to expect from third grade, how to be an awesome soccer player, why sleep away camp is fun and not scary, or what pitfalls to avoid in a new video game. Remember, this kind of writing is best used for authentic purposes, so make sure the advice actually gets to the intended recipient!

Thank-you Notes
Writing thank you notes for gifts is a great habit to encourage, but you can also urge your child to let the special people in his/her life know how wonderful they are. A note to the teacher after a field trip, school play, or at the end of the year; to a baseball coach after a great game or season; or to grandma just because your child is grateful for her, can be a good way for your child to express him/herself and reflect on the reasons we appreciate people. Of course, the recipient of the note will treasure it, too!

Pass-Along Story
This is a fun family game that helps with sentence building. Begin by sitting in a circle. Each player should write the first sentence to a story, then pass the paper to the right. The second person adds a new sentence to the story, then folds the paper so that the first sentence is hidden and only the new sentence can be seen and passes the paper to the right again. The third person to get the paper should read the visible sentence, add a sentence of their own, then fold the paper so that only their own sentence is visible. Pass the papers around as many times as players wish, then unfold and read the crazy stories!

National Handwriting Day

Tomorrow, January 23, 2010, is National Handwriting Day. While the "holiday" may have been created in the 1970's by the writing-instrument manufacturing community, National Handwriting Day remains a great opportunity to remind students and parents about the importance and value of strengthening penmanship skills.

According to the American Federation of Teachers, “students’ sentence-writing skills, the amount they write, and the quality of their writing all improve along with their handwriting.”

Here are a few links to interesting Handwriting Day activity ideas:

• How to Celebrate National Handwriting Day
• Templates and Activity Ideas from Crayola
• Pentel's National Handwriting Day Contest
• Activity Handouts from TeacherVision

Happy National Handwriting Day!

(Photo credit: Caitlinator via Flickr)