Handwriting and Maryanne Wolf

I'm excited about rolling out the implementation of Handwriting Without Tears at TRC.

I have not read the New Yorker article yet, but am looking forward to it. Also, I was lucky enough to meet with Maryanne Wolf when she was on sabbatical at Stanford. She coined the phrase "double deficit" in describing individuals with both auditory (phoneme processing disorder) and visual memory weakness in relationship to dyslexia. I'm planning on reading her book in the next 6 months. Has anyone read it? What did you think?

Handwriting in PA

Melissa and I tried to follow the sequence of the program the best we could given that we don't have mats for all the letters. We used the wood blocks, the dry erase board and the work sheets with Nicholas in that order. We chose one letter a day to work on. The task took about 7 minutes. We found that the language of the steps is really effective for reminding students where to start and stop their strokes. I am not an expert, but I'd be glad to share what I gleaned from the training with Jeanette and/or Lars.

Handwriting and Twilight of Books

Regarding Handwriting Without Tears: Jeanette Wyckoff, Kristin Agius and I attended a Printing and Cursive Workshop in June 2007, which we agreed was informative and worthwhile for TRC. Palo Alto and Saratoga seem to have gotten farther along in implementation than I have here in Burlingame. We should be thinking about company-wide use of this program. My difficulty has been figuring out how to fit it in our sessions, and because it's something that should be done daily, getting parents and students to buy in and do it at home. At some point, that would mean families buying some of the materials, because we're violating copyright if we copy a bunch of stuff--but the materials are relatively inexpensive. Melissa or Kristin, what were you using with that 3 year old, the wet/dry board? The Letter forms?

Something that I keep pushing, but which I'm not sure anyone is taking, is reading the New Yorker article about the decline in reading in our country and the way we learn to read: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain. It contains nice synopses of the recent survey on reading done by the National Endowment for the Arts and the fabulous "Proust and the Squid" by Maryanne Wolf. Has anyone else looked at this? Whaddya think?

Lars.

Handwriting

I am very excited to be learning a little more about Handwriting Without Tears. I watched Melissa in Palo Alto work with a 3 year old student the other day and I just love the program. I would really love to be trained in it by someone on our staff and to see what supplies we have company wide. It is language based and so, so necessary for so many kids.

In Palo Alto we are working with many writing students who have grapho-motor issues that I think could have really been helped when they were in pre-school. Please let me know if you have any information on this and if we can do a small training.

Kristin

Contribute

2008 is the year I will EXPECT members of The Reading Clinic Community to CONTRIBUTE...either here, on the team bulletin board, in our one-on-one meetings, as part of the Goodreads things Kristin and Diana got going (my page: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/757602), or whenever and whatever. It's not just a job (or it shouldn't be).

So members, can you answer the call, can you respond to the challenge?

Lars.

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