Most Pre-School Children Make Their Letters Before They Are Ready Which Is Why Their Handwriting Never Improves
After I taught high school math for 3 years, I was given the opportunity to design and implement a teaching program for 18 pre kindergarteners at a So Cal private school. I was excited because I could design the whole program from the ground up. So I set up a program that would teach them the 45 sounds in English (phonics), addition, subtraction, music, reading, and writing.
When it came time to teaching them to make their letters and numbers, I asked my director for a 10 foot rolling chalkboard. On the green slate, I took a thick black permanent marker and made 3 ten foot lines with help of a yardstick--Top Line, Bottom Line, and a dashed-middle line --I put them at a kid level height, so the kids could come up to board and make 1 foot high letters in the lines with chalk. I also did this so the kids could see each others attempts and discuss which were the better ones before they started practicing them on their own 3 line papers.
I thought teaching kids how to print would just be a simple process of showing them each of the upper case letters in A-B-C order on board, having them make a few big ones on the board, then trace a few on the own papers.That's the way most of us were taught, right?
Click Here to go to The Teacher's Alphabet Website
So we spent a day on Capital A's and the kids took home rows of very nice Capital A's. Then in the middle of Capital B day, some of kids were asking me how to do Capital A's again. I thought that was very odd. These kids already knew the 45 sounds of English and could add and subtract without using their fingers. Why were they forgetting how to make Capital A's? So I showed them again and we continued with capital B's.
So on the next, Capital C day, all the wheels came off our little handwriting teaching bus. I showed them how to make a Capital C on the board.
Even though my Capital C started “under” the Top Line on the board (as shown above) most of my kids proudly started their Capital C on the Top Line with the result they were imbalanced and irregular. So I told them “The Capital C starts under the Top Line.”
To which they replied “Where?” and I would repeatedly show them “the where” but they could never remember the “spot.”
I even seem to remember one of them asking “Then why isn’t there a line there?”
It was weird, even though I only had 18 kids, and had showed each of them several times where the Capital C started, even as they practiced the Capital C on their papers in front of me, they kept forgetting the “spot.” This was crazy. They weren’t getting it. They weren’t going to get it unless I did something else.
So I told them Capital C day was over and I was going to figure out some other way to teach them to make their printed letters by tomorrow. It was then I decided to stop teaching my kids to print in A-B-C order with three lines.
So, I started asking myself questions. What is the easiest stroke for beginning printers to practice?
Which letters are next easiest ? Are there any patterns? Are there any foundation elements that make up certain groups? Would all the letters look right if they were put into the ratios of 5 lines?
The truth is most us were never taught to write well as children, we were just taught make passable letters, told we were doing a great job, and as we got older blamed ourselves for having our sloppy handwriting . We should blamed our teachers! Up until the invention of The Teacher's Alphabet, there were no clear and obvious standards for making the printed letters well, especially the curved ones. Now there is. It is not your fault that you can’t print like an adult, you were never taught how to do it well.
The Teacher’s Alphabet approach that helps kids print like adults in just a few weeks. Needless to say, it also works well for adults who want to "cure' their childish handwriting. We have had thousands of sales and hardly any reviews in over 5 years of selling it on the web. This is despite the fact we have a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee -- no one has ever asked for their money back!
That's really interesting and you'd do really well here if you stop thinking in these fb marketing terms and stop plugging your site all that much.
It started well but then turned in an infomercial. Don't get me wrong, what you talk about is fascinating, but the culture here on steemit doesn't reward this type of promotion.
Write an article that is good without plugging anything [ it can actually be a tl: dr version of the free e-book for example ] and you'll see that more people respond to it and you'll make more rewards than pushing me like your fb page.
Just the opinion of a guy who's been here for some times now.
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Thanks for the Feedback I took off a few things. Let me know what you think.
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