Thursday, April 28, 2011

Make Letter Writing More Fun

How to make letter writing practice more fun?  Here's what a little kindergartener and I did yesterday:

Close your eyes and pick a letter from the book.  Make your favorite OT write the letter and corresponding word first, then you get to copy it.

Once you've written a few words from the book that correspond with the letters, set up your work station to "type" your work.  This student has quite a bit of difficulty with legible handwriting, despite the best efforts of his general ed and special ed teachers, so we're also introducing keyboarding at an early age. 
There was a lot of glare from the overhead lights in the hallway outside his classroom, so we kept propping up the AlphaSmart 3000 to get the right angle.  The 3-ring notebook wasn't sufficient and he thought of using his pencil case to improve the angle.  My purse prevents our rigged up system from sliding away.
This low tech slantboard worked well for a few minutes.  Later on in the year, when he earnestly begins his trial period with the word processor in class, we'll figure out a better system that is quick to set up at his desk.

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