Handwriting and Keyboarding: Fine Motor Skills at Work
When remote learning was in full swing last spring, how many of you looked at your kids, observed their typing skills and thought, “What the…???” I’m here to tell you it’s ok! Young students are still building fine motor skills, making the act of perfectly fluid typing something out of their developmental reach. Right now, if your children are still building and developing handwriting skills, chances are they’re still working on keyboarding skills. To expect young children to be fluid and accurate in typing but not in handwriting is unrealistic, seeing as both require the same prerequisite fine motor skills. They both require practice to become fluent and automatic. In short, when it comes to these skills, kids need to crawl before they can walk.
Skills necessary for proficiency in handwriting and keyboarding:
Fine motor skills: the ability to make movements using the small
muscles in our hands and wrists.
Bilateral coordination: the ability to use the right and left sides
of the body together at the same time or with alternating movements.
Postural control: maintaining a controlled, upright posture
Letter recognition
Isolated use of each finger
Hand-eye coordination
Keyboarding Skills: Grade Level Check
Kindergarten- finger to letter key association, identify home row by F/J bumps
3rd Grade- mastered how to form proper capitalization and punctuation (shift key usage)
6th Grade- type 8-11 words per minute without looking at keyboard, use mouse to scroll
8th Grade- type 15-20 words per minute
Information Retention and Handwriting
Both keyboarding and handwriting are tools that allow for student expression. Speed and accuracy in both allow children to freely express their words and feelings. But in handwriting, the movements we make when we write trigger the activation of the regions of the brain that take care of language, healing, thinking, and memory.
A 2006 study by Marieke Longcamp at Aix-Marseille Université compared the effects that handwriting and typing have on our ability to learn. The study found that children that learned to write letters by hand were better able to remember the letters and recognize them than children who had learned their letters by typing them on a computer. Movement plays a crucial role in letter representation.
Further research has also demonstrated how handwriting benefits our ability to learn in comparison with typing. A study by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) compared the ability of students to comprehend information conveyed to them while attending a lecture, by comparing those who took notes on laptops versus those who took notes by hand. Over the course of three experiments, they repeatedly found that the students who took handwritten notes were better at answering questions about the lecture than those that typed their notes.
The study concluded that when we hand write notes, we are required to process the information and reframe it in our own words, which aids in the learning process. As a teacher, my general rule is: writing in, typing out, meaning that new information is acquired via handwritten notes, but synthesized information, ie a research paper, book report, or something to be presented, is typed.
As teachers who specialize in hands-on, problem solving lessons and activities, Lauren and I find ourselves having discussions about fine and gross motor skills on an almost daily basis. As Kindergarten and first grade becomes more worksheet based and less task and process-oriented, students are losing out on opportunities to develop crucial fine motor skills through play and repetition. Busy Boards and sensory play are seen as preschool activities. Art Education has become less about the exploration of materials and open-ended inquiry and more about performing exact tasks in the style of certain artists or artistic movements. Again, we’re assuming our children can walk when we haven’t shown them how to crawl, which is why, over the last decade teaching K-6 children, I’ve increasingly seen second and third graders who can’t successfully tie their own shoes, pinch an alligator clip, or independently put a simple puzzle together.
Many older kids still struggle with developing and refining these skills. Here is a list of things that older children (tweens and teens) can do:
Ways to Develop and Improve Gross Motor Skills
Trampolines: Jumping on a trampoline is a great activity to improve balance.
Bowling: Aiming for targets and rolling a bowling ball is another way to work on gross motor skills.
If you don’t have a bowling alley nearby use empty plastic water bottles and a soccer ball.
Walking or climbing: Walking or climbing over unstable surfaces helps to strengthen trunk muscles.
Throw a few pillows on the floor for practice with walking on uneven surfaces.
Riding a bike, scooter, or skateboard: These activities can help older kids learn to maintain balance.
Dancing: Dancing helps kids develop balance and coordination.
Ways to Develop and Improve Fine Motor Skills
Cooking: Chop vegetables or knead bread or pizza dough- build those finger and wrist muscles!
Building: Working with tools like a hammer and a screwdriver allows kids to
make use of the small muscles in their hands. It also improves hand-eye coordination.
Juggling: Juggling improves both fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Playing a musical instrument: Playing an instrument builds fine motor skills,
especially piano, woodwind instruments, and guitar.
3D puzzles: 3D puzzles have foam-like pieces that fit together to
create models of everything from the Titanic to the Empire State Building.
LEGO and Structured Block Play: recreating a construction by consulting a model or set of directions.
It is the ability to visualize three-dimensional objects and imagine and manipulate spatial information in your head.
Not only does it build fine more skills, but it also builds non-verbal intelligence. Kids must analyze what they see, perceive the parts that make up the whole, and figure out how the parts relate to each other. Also, the pride that comes from following through with a whole project and seeing it come to fruition is crucial to building confidence.