Handwriting Without Tears Summary

In “Handwriting Without Tears®: General Education Effectiveness Through a Consultative Approach,” author Denise K. Donica examines the value of Handwriting Without Tears® (HWT) program for use in general education kindergarten classroom. Traditionally, the HWT curriculum is implemented by the occupational therapy practitioner in one-on-one treatment sessions with students. For the study, HWT was introduced into two consecutive kindergarten classes with the teachers, instead of OT practitioners, leading handwriting exercises for 15 minutes daily. The control group was the kindergarten class from the previous year, whose students progressed to first grade. Students’ legibility at the end of the school year was compared to other students’ scores who were taught using a different teaching technique called the D’Nealian style of writing. Students’ printing handwriting abilities were tested using the Test of Handwriting Skills – Revised (THS-R) at the end of each year. The test, which takes about an hour to …show more content…
Although E.S. uses the HWT workbook in her occupational therapy sessions, implementing those same teaching strategies earlier, in daily sessions in the general education classroom, could have been productive in preventing poor handwriting skills or habilitating more effective handwriting strategies for her. Since OT practitioners can act as consultants in the general education classroom settings, integrating HWT into daily classroom sessions could be beneficial to E.S. as she would be exposed to the effective teaching methods of HWT daily, as opposed to biweekly, with the added benefit of inclusive OT instruction. Doing so would not only provide the practical benefits of specific HWT techniques, but would also provide an avenue of confidence for E.S. as she would be learning along-side her classmates instead of learning from them