HOW HANDWRITING HELPS CHILDREN

The author is Teacher Pampanga

JUDITH H. PINEDA

NOTEBOOKS punctuate our learning more than we expect. This is where the art of handwriting or “script” is preserved, even as it is endangered by technology, where the hand has been taken over by keypads of various gadgets available to children.

Notebooks, with their leaves of paper, are the spaces where we learn how to write. Recent research has psychiatrists and neuroscientists asserting that writing by hand lets children read more quickly and communicate more expressively.

In a research titled “What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades,” it pointed out that children in grades two through five showed that those who composed text by hand produced more words and ideas than those typing on a keyboard.

In brain imaging, those with better handwriting showed greater activation of neural activity in areas associated with reading, writing and memory.

Other studies showed that, over tracing and printing letters, cursive writing has an edge, such as training self-control. This is food for thought for parents whose five- or six-year-olds are quicker than their elders to swipe and activate their personal tablets as soon as they are seated.

The scientific link between penmanship and communication is even more significant for public school students. While the situation sorely tests the students’endurance, not to mention legibility, the exercise with paper and pencil prepares them for a principle proven in laboratories and classrooms: writing by hand helps a person process a lecture and reframe it in his or her words.

Perfecting the art of penmanship in childhood benefits the adult’s skills in comprehension, encoding, reflection and memory. The link between handwriting and learning helps you think better.

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I at Dila-Dila Elementary School, Sta. Rita,