Legibility and Fluency

It is really quite easy to establish a fluency score for your pupil. That means it is not time consuming to track the score as an indicator of skill development progress.

Handwriting fluency is expressed as a number representing the number of legible letters written per minute. A key word in the last sentence is legible. Directions for a Fluency test will be a topic one day soon, but let's think about the impact of legibility on learning and teaching today.

It's a given that legibility of handwriting is important. That fact brings forth a couple of the most difficult hurdles a student and teacher must overcome.

First, a child is not born with the ability to control movement of any sort, let alone the fluent handwriting kind. And, because the pupil is product oriented, virtually all skills related to fluency really don't matter to the child. Until we teach, he or she is only interested in creating a satisfactory copy of the shape.

From the child's point of view, a crayon-crushing, finger-twisting, sure-fire-writer's-cramp grip on the pencil doesn't matter. Paper holding doesn't matter. Start-point, direction of movement and stroke sequence are not at all important.

Physical process habits that will defeat fluency later on, will be formed quickly unless we recognize and teach the right process skills in the beginning. The process is more important than the product. And, we must know in our heart and soul, that the child really can learn the correct process. We must believe in them because they will be too quick to say, "I can't."

Second, the goal of legibility poses another difficulty. As we work to include fluency as a goal, too much demand for product accuracy will retard development of fluency. We try to guide practice of fluent movement, but a lack of control makes the child resist and revert to careful, visual guidance of the movements. The result is practice of laborious drawing rather than smooth fluency.

Thankfully there is considerable "wiggle room" when it comes to legibility. The movements have to be really out of whack to make a form totally unrecognizable. It means that we can believe in and coach practice of the fluent kind of movement. The initial result may not be as accurate as the student desires, but we can try again and the results will improve. We can keep the goal of fluency with confidence and not let the student settle for less.

There is also a darker side to the legibility factor. But that will be a topic for another day.

The Fluency Challenge

Children are expected to write more now than ever before, and at a younger age. But in many classrooms, the child must invent a way to put the symbols on paper. And, there is little attention paid to the effort until obvious problems arise.

If teachers would measure and track fluency, the need for help could be spotted right away. However, it is not likely that handwriting fluency is even mentioned in the language arts curriculum guide. At some point the child is noticed because he or she is lagging behind classmates in reading, spelling and writing. Others are noticed, usually much sooner, because they can't seem to pay attention long enough to learn.

When daily handwriting exercises include movement as a goal, good things happen. One of the most important things is engagement. The challenge to learn how to control the movement is as attractive as a video game. Children are engaged and focused on meeting the challenge. They learn how to attend and focus as a result, and to stick with it a little longer each day. You can see the effects quickly and it is easy to measure progress.

What is fluency? Fluent movement is smooth. It is movement toward a goal. It can be slow or faster, smooooooth or smooth. It is preplanned in, and guided by, the motor system. In order for that to happen, we have to get control information into the system. That is another powerful attribute of the fluency challenge. When you include "how to move" as a goal, internalization is enhanced. The child who can write letters with smooth rhythm no longer needs to look at a model on the wall to recall or visualize the shape. He or she can bring the letter or word up and out of the brain because "it's in there."

There is a movement-based strategy for teaching handwriting skills that does include fluency as a goal. There are many people out there who have used it effectively. Hopefully, we can get them to talk about the experience here so that you can benefit from it.

If you are struggling to overcome issues like attention deficit, poor reading skills, spelling problems or general learning lags, tell us about the situation. We want to help.