Abstract
One of the most vexing educational problems in children is the inability to learn to read. Recently it has been shown that the inability to write skillfully imposes great limits on a child’s ability to learn to read. In this paper, information from multiple sources and studies will be reviewed. All of the sources imply a physical (movement) issue is part of the learning problem and emphasize the importance of teaching handwriting skills. Many schools have eliminated all priority and time for instruction of handwriting and college methods courses for teacher training rarely touch on hand-writing. The goal herein is to review, for educators and parents, a collection of evidence which strongly indicates that instruction of physical approach skills (i.e., pencil-hold, paper and arm positioning, and body posture) are extremely important. Without identification and correction, maladaptive hand, wrist and arm positions defeat the emergence of fluency and lend to “Reversed Positioning Sensation” (RPS) an invisible condition that affects many students. It is now clear that for RPS children, these skills are critical for literacy to develop. Educators should know that teaching skills for fluent handwriting can be a powerful intervention for children struggling with literacy; and successful instruction in primary classrooms may well prevent development of attention problems and written language disabilities.
Highlights
“Word blindness,” which later came to be labeled as dyslexia, was first recognized in Britain near the turn of the 20th century
Dr Orton postulated that this condition was due to the formation of double images—one reversed and the other normal—which were encoded in opposite sides of the brain. He personally devised a treatment for this condition: affected children were to repeatedly write with the dominant hand until only the correct image remained, after which the abnormal reversed image would be suppressed. The use of this handwriting remediation for reading problems achieved notable success with struggling students supporting the theory that a physical component was a major part of the problem
It is interesting to note that the successful method employed by Montessori encouraged the writing hand to be in the same palm-down orientation that is implemented in the Reversed Positioning Sensation (RPS) remedial hand position
Summary
“Word blindness,” which later came to be labeled as dyslexia, was first recognized in Britain near the turn of the 20th century. Dr Orton postulated that this condition was due to the formation of double images—one reversed and the other normal—which were encoded in opposite sides of the brain He personally devised a treatment for this condition: affected children were to repeatedly write with the dominant hand until only the correct image remained, after which the abnormal reversed image would be suppressed. Through the years many researchers have identified the important connection between visual motor and auditory connections to reading In her 1912 English translation of The Montessori Method, the author reported that in her Casa dei Bambini, a pre-school for poor children in Rome, children read “spontaneously” once they had practiced hand motions forming letters of the alphabet. We describe a collection of evidence which strongly indicates that instruction of physical approach skills (i.e., pencil-hold, paper and arm positioning, and body posture) are critical for the development of literacy
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