Recently I had a message from someone asking if I had any games and tips for helping children to improve their handwriting speed. This really made me think and remember children I have taught in the past who had great ideas for writing but really struggled to get their ideas down in the time given. This was frustrating for them and me as we both wanted to be able to prove that they were great writers. So, what can be done to help? And remember, these are not quick fixes, this takes lots of time and practise so the more fun you can make it the better!
Before you start any of the activities below, I would definitely just check on the list below to see if there is anything that needs to be worked on and corrected to help first:
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then this is definitely something to address first, as this will have a huge impact on the speed that children are able to write at.
This basically refers to being able to make movements using the small muscles in our hands and fingers and form a big part of everyday life. Having good fine motor skills enables us to cut with scissors, write, tie laces, use cutlery, the list goes on. There are lots of things to do to help improve fine motor skills and luckily, they can be really fun activities. There are loads of great ideas around if you search online or grab ideas from social media but I’ve posted a few of my favourites below and ones I think would be appealing to children aged 7-11:
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Resource |
Activity |
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Playdoh |
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Paperclips |
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Fidget Popper |
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Tweezers |
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Computer Games |
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My obvious suggestion would be also to play games to develop those fine motor skills and practise writing at speed. Below are a few games that I would suggest to use to build up writing speed which include a mixture of drawing and writing. Both will help improve speed if played as part of a ‘race to win’ game.
1. Christmas Tree Roll – a great high speed game!
2. Don’t Say The Word – give children a time limit to write their sentence down.
3. Name That Grammar Term – you could increase/decrease the speed on this game.
I hope some of those things give you some new ideas for how you can support your children will building their writing speed. I’d also recommend reading my blog ‘Top Tips to Take the Fear Out of Writing’ as some of the activities there might also help. Whatever you do, break it down into small chunks and practise regularly and I’m sure you’ll soon see some improvement. Building writing speed takes time though so patience is required (from everyone)!
