Thursday, April 2, 2015

Interactive Data Collection for Handwriting Improvement

One of the first graders I see has the best teacher for helping students improve in all kinds of skills--fine motor, organization, self-regulation and self help.  Maybe she's picked up a few tricks from one of her long-time friends who is another OT on our staff???

Today she was telling me how the student has improved, not just with her handwriting legibility, but with the content of her sentences.  This morning the student and I reviewed some of her recent classwork and made special note of particular letters she had written:  1.  Those formed correctly and sitting on the line, 2.  Those formed correctly but "jumping" off the line and 3.  Those that needed a little help.  I tallied them up like this:
As you can see by the totals at the bottom of each column, the student had 17 correctly-formed letters.  We thought that was a lot!  She was especially proud that 3 of her "t's" and 4 of her "o's" were perfect.

Every writing sample will have a different number of words so all I'm looking for is the ratio of great to fair/poor.  At the beginning of the school year this student did not have very many great letters in her work.

I may offer a little guidance, but the student's progress is due to the daily effort of her wonderful teacher, who has been "Teacher of the Year" at this school several times. 

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