Back to Basics
Printing Skills - The Forgotten Foundation of Literacy
If a child can’t print, they are essentially illiterate! The subconscious motor planning required fast letter and number production is a necessary precursor for achievement in ALL academic areas. Children who can’t remember how to make their letters and numbers, or who have poor letter recognition, are delayed in spelling, math, sentence composition, socials, and science. These often bright children are left behind with labels of ‘learning disabled’, when they really just need to learn to print! 20% of primary children have at least a two year delay in printing skills. Why? Teachers are now only spending 14 minutes per day teaching printing, and use inconsistent instruction and evaluation methods, often with the unfounded belief that technology will replace the need to print. As printing and keyboarding are both visual motor skills, a child who can’t print often can’t keyboard. Struggling printers receive lower grades, are shunned by peers, and exhibit lower self esteem. As printing is the foundation skill for all academics, we are unknowingly creating an illiterate generation of children. Learn what you as a parent, teacher and therapist can do to help make printing and reading easy, starting in pre-school! Back to Basics offers essential, leading edge information to ensure every child attains literacy.
Workshop Goal – Back to Basics raises awareness regarding the reasons why we still need to teach printing, and offers schools, government and university suggestions and initiatives on how to ease the job of printing and reading for all children.
Learning Outcomes
- Analyze current research on the decline of printing instruction by teachers, the impact on literacy, and list three reasons why children need to learn to print to achieve literacy.
- Using the provided Foundation Scale for Grades K-6, rank your students’ individual performance levels in printing and reading.
- Using the Fine Motor Observations and Strategies form, recognize 13 critical factors for fine motor development of the eyes and hands, and list one intervention technique for each factor to improve printing and reading skill.
- Develop three classroom and school based intervention strategies to achieve printing instruction and evaluation consistency by using the Printing Basics Guide.
- Experience a Printing Adventure with the new Move’in Program.
The Move’in Program improves printing and reading by providing an assessment and intervention in the form of a board game, played in school or at home. Move’in comes with a web-based computer program that allows children to create their own custom journal and worksheets, and database for progress tracking and reports.