Clip Art and Fonts by Christopher Jarman
Other links to sites dealing with handwriting
The
Handwriting Interest Group
A group of interested people involved inthe teaching of handwriting. They
publish a twice early journal and run courses.
Young Minds Homeschool. A very good site with lots of simple handwriting worksheets including those students who are at the prewriting stage. The worksheets are free and available in Web and PDF (Adobe Acrobat) formats. A very useful resource.
Thrass handwriting and spelling skills. This is a commercial teaching programme
A Common Sense approach to the Teaching of Handwriting. An American document on how to teach handwriting.
Teaching Handwriting (Letterland). A commercial handwriting system
Startwrite. A commercial wordprocessor by Sherston Software
Commercial School Fonts. US,UK and Australian resources
The acquisition of handwriting in the UK Good reference paper on the skills needed for good handwriting and the terminology used.
Left Hand Education. Information for parents and teachers on how to help students you are left handed.
Handwriting without tears. An American commercial site
Teaching Handwriting Today. Christopher Jarman's handwriting information
Handwriting for Windows. A commercial product sold by Inclusive Technology
Many students who have some form of learning disability often find writing difficult. This could be because of poor gross and fine motor skills or perhaps perception difficulties. Difficulty with handwriting is often an early indication that a student may have learning problems and may find it hard work to keep up with their peers.
One of the things which is important to think about when teaching handwriting skills is to be consistent with whatever style you decide to teach the children. One advantage of teaching cursive writing is the rhythmic nature of the approach, this can be helpful to students as it keeps the "flow" going and aids concentration.
There are a few ways that ICT can help with the teaching of writing skills. The computer program Claude and Maude from SEMERC is useful in reinforcing the knowledge needed to form each letter correctly. Another approach is to use the computer to print out words at a larger scale than you would normally do to produce work sheets for the children to practice their letter shapes. This can work very well and has the advantage of you being able to write something about each person rather than just a series of letters.
Below is an example of a dotty font developed by Christopher Jarman and Artist and expert on handwriting. This font was developed from an idea by a teacher from a north east special school.
