Page 5 - Module 2: Teachers Guide for Getting Ready for Writing PONY

Module 2: Getting Ready for Writing Teacher’s Guide.
Introduction
The development of handwriting is an important activity that all children are exposed to both at home and when they begin school. In the early years of education, whilst the action of forming the letters is not the main focus of developing handwriting skills, there are fundamental skills that young children need to develop in readiness for learning to hold a pencil and forming letters in writing.
Hemispheres Think Write Handwriting Programme is unique in its approach to teaching children the skills they need for writing their letters. Hemispheres Think Write Handwriting Programme recognises that the success children experience when learning to write is based on a foundation of strong early developmental motor, visual and cognitive skills. Estabilishing these skills occurs before formal teaching of letter formation begins.
For this reason, Hemispheres Think Write Handwriting Programme has a prewriting module, called Getting Ready for Writing. It is designed to help teachers and parents support the development of key skills that will encourage and enable them to transition into learning formal handwriting, before they enter their Reception class.
The objective of Module 2: Getting Ready for Writing is to support children between the ages of 3 - 5 years to develop the right motor, visual and thinking skills that underpin the learning process used in Hemispheres Think Write Handwriting Programme Modules 3 and 4 where children are formally learning how to form, position and produce their letters to express their learning.
Module 2 is all about exploration learning through fun and interactive activities as well as being exposed to the ‘right’ types of movements to help develop the appropriate underlying neurological skills.
We recommend that whilst children are exploring the activities in Module 2, they are exposed to and undertake the learning in Module 1: Building the Cognitive Framework. This way the animal characters that are present throughout the activities of Module 2 will have meaning and understanding for the children. This ability to ‘link and associate’ the animal images with their learning will form the basis for the children’s memory systems, help- ing them to learn the key aspects of the programme.
The structure of the other teacher guides is more sequential but in this teacher guide the activities have been separated into the main three components of handwriting: Motor, Visual and Cognitive skills. You are
therefore encourage you to explore all of the three learning areas simultaneously and not follow the book in sequential order.
Overall Targets for Module 2: Getting Ready for Writing
1. To be developing age appropriate fine motor skills
2. To be showing evolution of motor control for cutting and colouring
3. o be developing early visual perceptual skills for visual discrimination, size and direction
4. To be building up and exploring spatial direction and understanding different spatial positions
5. To be developing and showing competency in copying and tracing early shapes
6. To be showing competency in being able to copy the starting shapes to show readiness for learning to write
letters
As children grow in confidence and abilities they will naturally want to explore the formation of letters. From experience this is something that parents like to encourage, however despite the best of intentions children may be encouraged to develop less desirable skills at home. To help with this we have added some additional pages in the back of the book to offer information on the programme and ways to support their child at home. Working in partnership with parents is most effective when both school and parents are giving the same message and guidance, especially in relation to handwriting and letter formation.
© 2016. Shelley Birkett-Eyles. Hemispheres Think Write Limited