What Impacts Legibility when writing?

• Line regard- are you letters touching the bottom line? Are they "popcorn" letters that are popping above or below the bottom line? Do your "Go under" letters go under the bottom line?

• Sizing- Are your short letters short? Are your tall letters tall? Is your sizing consistent? Or are some letters too tall, while some are too small?

-Short Letters

-Tall Letters

-Go Under Letters

• Spacing- You should be able to put only one piece of spaghetti (spaghetti= a thin vertical line made with a pencil) between letters in your words! If you can put more than one piece of spaghetti between letters within order your spaces are too big! Between your words you should be able to fit a meatball (meatball= a circle the size of a letter). If you can't fit a meatball your spacing is too small. A very LARGE space between words is better than a space that is too small!

• Do your letters look like the letter is supposed to be? I work with the students to form letters correctly. After first or second grade poor formation is very habitual and can be difficult to change. If you have a hard time remembering to form your letters correctly, it's ok! Just make sure they look right! So a "b" should look like a "b"not a 6, etc.

• Erase Mistakes- When you do not thoroughly erase mistakes and then try and write over the mistake the legibility decreases significantly.

• It is also important that your child is using developmentally appropriate paper. Children in Grades K-2, they should be using paper with a middle dotted line. As your child gets older the lines should be smaller, but still with the center dotted line. If they do not use the center dotted line paper you will see that their legibility is impacted. For children Grades 3 and up, wide ruled loose leaf paper is more appropriate. In third grade your child still may require assistance with sizing on loose leaf paper. In the linked video you can see a strategy that may help with sizing on loose leaf paper for children who need assistance with that.

Ways to Help Improve Your Handwriting while Completing Class Work

1. Review the areas above and decide which effects your legibility the most. Once you decide what is impacting legibility the most, make a decision to work on that ONE area. If you cannot figure out which area impacts legibility most, email me a picture of handwriting samples!

2. Self-monitor your work. When you are finished writing, go back and see what looks messy and fix it. Or if you are choosing just one area to work on, look at that area and see what words should be corrected.

3. When copying, try and remember multiple letters or words at a time. So instead of looking up and down after each letter, look up, memorize a few letters or words (depending on your age and skill level) and then look back down and write them. The more you look up and down, the more likely you are to make a mistake.

4. Go back and review your work and put a star next to the neatest letters, words or sentences.

5. If staying on the bottom line is a challenge, take a highlighter and highlight the line to help with remaining on the line. You can tell your child "make sure all of your letters touch the yellow line" (or whatever color highlighter you use).

6. To help with spacing, take a popsicle, decorate it and make it look like a person and there you have your "Spaceman". Put your spaceman between each word when you write.

7. If there are letter reversals noted, tell your child " I see some letters that are backwards". See if they can find the letters and fix them without you pointing it out. If they can't find them, point out the reversal and see if they can fix it.

Helpful Links

Capital Letter Formation

Lowercase Letter Formation

Number Formation