How HANDwriting feeds Language, Literacy, Learning & Creativity

In this digital age of SMS messaging, social networking, blogging and cell phones in your pocket with email, notebook and web browser access, some ask "is there any role for handwriting with crayon, pencil or pen?" Handwriting seems so out of place and inconvenient. Shouldn't we just bypass this stage with our kids and teach keyboard skills to our toddlers?

I want to suggest at least five good reasons, why the answer to this question is NO!

• First, there is a complex and interdependent relationship between scribble, drawing, fine motor skills and learning.
• Second, research has shown that speed and fluency of handwriting has a direct impact on later writing development and learning.
• Third, handwriting offers a means to experiment with letters and words that can intersect in a unique way with drawing, composition and thinking.
• Fourth, handwriting facilitates risk taking in learning as well as creativity and problem solving.
• Fifth, there are many pragmatic and interpersonal reasons why the ability to write with pen and ink is still important. 

1. There is a relationship between scribble, drawing, fine motor skills and learning

It is obvious that for the young child writing has its genesis in scribble. Those first attempts to make marks on paper, the walls, or in the dirt, are a child's first attempt to experiment with the representation of meaning. While the first strokes of the 9 month-old child may be more about play and experimentation with objects, eventually the child will attempt to represent something. They will look up at whoever is nearby and smile as if to say "Look at me, I made this!" At this point, children have begun to work out how language and meaning can be symbolically represented.

But this early use of crayons or pencils to make marks or signs is not simply a random motor task; it involves a complex blend of cognitive, kinaesthetic, and perceptual-motor abilities. Decades of research shows that it isn't just that handwriting requires these things, it has been shown to affect cognitive abilities. For over 50 years researchers have been trying to untangle the complex links between handedness (i.e. the tendency to he left-handed or right handed), gross motor skills and fine motor skills like handwriting. Brain research has also shown us that Binocular vision (the focussing of eyes as they work together) requires the child to use two hemispheres of the brain and that fine motor tasks have a relationship to this emerging ability. In short, handwriting's demands for complex hand-eye coordination are related to a variety of other forms of sensory integration.  

As well, as the child moves from marks on paper to controlled 'scribble' (see my previous post on early writing HERE) the fine motor demands of handwriting helps the child to:

• Memorise letter shapes
• Develop complex concepts of print like left to right movement, the differences between letters and words and sound-symbol correspondence. This is one of the reasons that kinaesthetic approaches have been used for children with early literacy problems for decades
• Experiment with language as a representational form along with drawing - children's earliest 'writing' will usually combined marks, letters, drawing, colour and pattern.

There are some technology applications that might allow children to do some of this as they get older, and some writing apps that allow the child to use their finger to scribble and form letters. But their earliest steps towards written language will occur with crayon, chalk, pencil or a finger dipped in paint, or even the dirt as they try to make marks and symbolize something.

2. Handwriting speed and fluency has an impact on writing and learning

The second reason is the relationship between the speed and fluency of handwriting and the ability to write and think. Speed and fluency are important for all aspects of language - listening, speaking, reading and writing. The faster the brain processes the data, the more effective the language user. This is true of early reading and writing. There is strong evidence to show that if children are slow as they form letters then language processing may be affected at higher levels (e.g. forming words, expressing ideas, sentence patterns etc).

Researchers like Professor Stephen Peverly at Teachers' College, Columbia University have found that for children (and adults), speed and fluency of handwriting is very important if they are to express themselves well through writing.

Professor Steven Graham expresses the importance of speed and fluency in a recent article for American Educator:

"As handwriting skills become more automatic and less cognitively demanding, attention and resources for carrying out other writing processes, including those involving more reflection and careful composing, become available."

While we don't need a return to the days of daily handwriting lessons for 20-30 minutes, there is a need to give some priority to handwriting support. This might be as basic as helping a 1 year-old how to hold a crayon and pencils to reduce physical discomfort and aid fluency, but it may well extend later to help with letter formation, pattern formation exercises, line cards systematic introduction to the faster cursive forms of writing in primary school and so on. In this way, children's early literacy will be supported and the groundwork will be established for later writing on keyboards and other electronic devices.

3. A Stimulus for Drawing and Composition

It is important to understand that when the one year old 'scribbles' or draws, that they are trying to make meaning. My youngest grandchild is just 18 months old and one of Lydia's favourite activities lately is deliberate and quite fine drawing. As she sits for ages making deliberate marks on paper she often says 'Draw flower'. She loves flowers and she is already experimenting with how to represent them. As she chooses her paper and pen, Lydia makes choices about which colour, where she will position her drawing on the paper and she shares her work others ('Mum, mum, mum, draw flower'). Even in a child's earliest efforts at drawing and scribble, we begin to see the emergence of composition and meaning making on paper.

Diagram of Sam's Medical Diagnosis

The drawing to the right was done by Sam another grandchild, who is in his first year of school (Kindergarten). He did it while he was playing doctors with his sister at our house. His 4 year old sister was the mother and her dolls were the child patients. The ritualised game involved mother taking the doll (Sophie) to the doctor and explaining the problem. Dr Sam would diagnosis the problem, each time using a diagram to show the seat of the problem, before explaining the cause and his treatment. In this case Sophie presented with a pain in the stomach. Sam drew the picture and explained the problem to the worried mother:

"See this, that's her brain"
"And you see that black spot? It's because of not enough water."
"It's because of not enough water, it's not her stomach!"
"Give her lots of water and she'll be okay."

In this language story, Sam uses drawing, spoken language and written language to create an explanation and narrative for the creative play that he engages in with his sister.

4. Risk taking, creativity and problem solving

Sam says 'I like the CD of the wedding' they went to

Sam has loved school and made good progress in early reading. And in recent weeks he has suddenly taken off as a writer. When I was staying at his house a few weeks ago we spent at least two hours one morning playing post office while his parents were at a wedding. The game was Sam's idea and involved me (at his suggestion) writing letters to him, as well as to his sister, Nanna, Mum and Dad. This kept me busy! His job was to deliver the letters to assigned mailboxes in the house. Others got to read them and await the next delivery. After an hour or so I suggested that he might write some letters. He replied, "No, I can't write properly". His mother had just arrived back from the wedding and overheard him and said, "but your teacher says you're doing lots of writing at school". To which he replied, "no, but I don't know all the letters".

Like some 'pancakes, cream, strawberry milk, sandwiches....?'

I placed a piece of paper in front of him and said, "that doesn't matter Sam, write one for me and you can read it to me, I'd love to get a letter from you". He replied, 'okay' and proceeded to write one to me and then one to his mother. This was followed by a flurry of letters to others. A week later when he came to stay with us, the game was repeated with Nanna. This time he became the letter writer from the start, and Nanna delivered the mail. He also planned the rest of the day with writing taking on a key role. He wrote a timetable for the day's activities, recorded the events, and used writing in every activity. When he created a zoo in our lounge room with cages and plastic animals he decided he needed tickets, signs to direct people to them, and of course a cafe, which in turn needed a menu. Sam was engaged in a frenzy of writing linked to his creative explorations, play and problem solving. Writing was feeding and supporting learning.

5.  Pragmatic and interpersonal reasons

As well as the above reasons for the importance of writing, there are also strong practical and interpersonal reasons for some attention to handwriting.

Pragmatically, the majority of writing and note making at school still occurs on paper.  While this is changing (especially for adults), it won't change quickly for children, who will learn more effectively if they can write fluently, and to some extent neatly.  It would seem highly likely that the humble note pad, diary, post-it sticker, magic sketcher or notice board will still have a place in communication (at least for a while).

In terms of interpersonal writing, it is also difficult to see us losing completely the handwritten birthday card, gift tag, special letter and so on. There is still something very special about receiving a letter or card that combines careful choice of paper, design, words, images and sometimes personally drawn graphics. This is also a legitimate reason to offer some support for handwriting.

4. Summing up

As we head even further down the digital path we need to be careful not to ignore handwriting, and in the process deprive children of vital cognitive, kinaesthetic and perceptual-motor abilities and skills that are vital for learning and development.

Other resources

Steven Graham (2009). Want to Improve Children's Writing? American Educator, Winter 2009-2010.
'The Writing on the Wall' (2007), Newsweek.
'Your Child's Handwriting', Kids Health.
'Handwriting Instruction: What Do we Know?' (1986), ERIC Digest

This is a revised version of a post I wrote in June 2010

Brain Development in Babies and Toddlers: Implications for learning

I wrote a post on 'Brain Development and the Early Weeks of Life' in September last year just after the birth of our 5th grandchild (pictured left aged 8 months). The main thrust of my previous post was to stress just how complex the young brain is and our need to understand this if we are to enhance the development of our children in the preschool years. I wrote at the time that:

• A baby is born with a brain made up of cells with enormous potential that are undergoing massive change right from birth.
• What any child is born with is just the beginning; it's a framework for development and learning. The child's environment has a big impact on how brain cells are connected or “wired” to each other.
• The young child's experiences, sensory stimulation, interaction with others, language, the love and care she receives and so on, will all have a huge impact on development.
• If children are deprived of a stimulating environment the development of their brains suffer.
• Early stimulation establishes the foundations for children’s later learning; it influences how children will learn, and how effectively they will learn.
• Early physical and emotional stress has an impact on brain development.

Professor Alison Gopnik (UC Berkeley) has just written a helpful opinion piece in the New York Times (15th August 2009) titled 'Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think' that raises similar issues and shares some recent research support for her arguments.

She suggests that "new studies, demonstrate that babies and very young children know, observe, explore, imagine and learn more than we would ever have thought possible." She cites three recent pieces of research including one she has been responsible for with colleagues. These three studies use some of the many new methodologies designed to assess the learning and attention of babies.

Study 1 - Researchers Fei Xu and Vashti Garcia (Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia) hypothesised that children as young as 8 months could understand probabilities. When babies were shown a box full of mixed-up Ping-Pong balls (mostly white but with some red ones mixed in), they were more surprised and looked longer and more intently, when four red balls and one white ball out of the box which would be unexpected given the greater number of white balls in the box.

Study 2 - Professor Laura Schulz and Elizabeth Baraff Bonawitz at M.I.T. demonstrated that when young children play, they are also exploring cause and effect. They introduced preschoolers to a toy and effectively showed one group how it worked but not the other. When the experimenters gave the toys to the children those who had seen how it worked played less with it than those who hadn’t. They concluded that this demonstrates the desire of babies to explore things.

Study 3 - Alison Gopnik and Tamar Kushnir discovered that preschoolers could use probabilities to learn how things work and that this let them imagine new possibilities. They demonstrated this by using yellow and blue blocks that appeared to make a machine light up when placed over it. When given the chance to choose a block, children who couldn’t yet add or subtract, were more likely to choose the high-probability yellow block (the one that they'd seen light the machine up more) to try to light the machine.

Professor Gopnik concludes that it is easy to take the wrong lessons from this research. Some will assume that this means we should be pushing babies and toddlers faster, providing them with lessons, programs, focuses and structured learning environments. But the brain and the intelligence of the preschooler is different to that of adults who do learn well (often) in focused, planned and systematic ways, with goals, outcomes, KPIs and so on.

But babies are different. When we say young children can’t pay attention for long, we really mean that they can’t concentrate on the things that we want them to or think they should focus on. Professor Gopnik reminds us that babies have trouble concentrating on just one thing and shutting the rest out. As a result we tend to underestimate what babies can do, but now we know that babies are actively engaged thinking and solving problems without being goal-oriented. She comments:

“Babies are captivated by the most unexpected events. Adults, on the other hand, focus on the outcomes that are the most relevant to their goals….Adults focus on objects that will be most useful to them….children play with the objects that will teach them the most. In our study, 4-year-olds imagined new possibilities based on just a little data. Adults rely more on what they already know. Babies aren’t trying to learn one particular skill or set of facts; instead, they are drawn to anything new, unexpected or informative."

You can read Professor Gopnik's complete article (here)

Other Resources

I've written a lot about play and other ways to stimulate children in the early years. The labels on the sidebar of the blog will help to find these, but you can access a series of posts I did on play here.

For a more detailed discussion of the brain's development as well as problems with development, there is an interesting introduction that I found helpful - Fertile Minds, by J. Madeleine Nash in Time magazine, Feb 3, 1997.

Dr Kim Oates gave a series of three public lectures that I hosted at New College in 2006 that might also be of interest, especially the first talk titled "The amazing early years of life" that can be downloaded as a pod cast here. I also found these very helpful.

Early Childhood Cognition Lab at M.I.T. (here)

Growing up in Australia

The Australian Federal Government has funded a longitudinal research study of children from birth to eleven years of age. The project is called Growing up In Australia and aims to examine the impact of Australia's unique social and cultural environment on the next generation. It also hopes to increase our understanding of early childhood development, inform social policy debate, and help identify opportunities for early intervention and prevention strategies in policy areas concerning children. The project was launched in 2004 and is now beginning to release reports and findings. In recent weeks there has been widespread reporting of general findings relating to the first three to four years of life. This has included:

• Media reports - for example Carol Nader reported this week in major Australian newspapers on the first reports (here)
• Official research reports - these are available from the Australian Institute of Family Studies website (here) and from the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services & Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) here.
  
• A series of programs on "Life at 3" years has just been launched on ABC television and premiered today (2nd October). It will continue on Thursdays at 8.30pm on ABC One (details here)

Details of the study

The study has a broad, multi-disciplinary base, draws on a nationally representative sample of children and addresses a range of research questions about family functioning, health, non-parental child-care and education. Data are being collected over seven years from two cohorts every two years. The first cohort of 5000 children aged less than 12 months in 2003/4 will be followed until they reach 6 to 7 years of age, and the second cohort comprising 5000 children aged 4 years in 2003/4 will be followed until they reach 10 or 11 years of age. Study informants include the child (when of an appropriate age) and their parents, carers and teachers.

The most recent research paper has just been released:

How well are Australian infants and children aged 4 to 5 years doing?

The report deals with:

• outcomes for children in different social circumstances;
• children's health;
• children's use of non-parental care;
• mothers' health;
• family learning environments and child outcomes.

The impact of book reading and television

The section of most interest to me is the latter and has turned up some interesting findings. Features of family learning environments that showed strong evidence of being positively associated with higher learning outcomes included the following:

• the child is read to on three or more days per week;
• there are more than 10 children's books in the home;
• the child enjoys being read to for more than 10 minutes at a time;
• the child has access to a computer in the home;
• the child has medium to high engagement in out-of-home learning activities with family members.

The findings indicated some worrying impacts from excessive television viewing. Children who watched three or more hours of television on week days or five hours or more on the weekend, were more likely to have lower outcome scores in varied categories including physical, social–emotional and learning.

The importance of the family learning environment

The study also concluded that while much of the diversity in knowledge and skills that children bring to school can be linked to social background, the differences in learning and developmental outcomes related to the family learning environment, are apparent irrespective of the social and economic circumstances of the family. This shows the significance of the family learning environment on child outcomes, something that has also been established by other researchers.

You can read this section of the report in full here.