More focus needed on handwriting, says former teacher

By TINA LAW — The Press

A retired Christchurch edu­cator is call­ing for a back-to-basics approach to teach­ing hand­writ­ing and read­ing in schools.

Peter Tucker, who has spent sev­eral years teach­ing low-achieving pupils, said there was not enough emphasis in schools on handwriting.

The stand­ard of hand­writ­ing dis­played by pupils, espe­cially boys, was get­ting worse as the need to write was reduced with the increased use of com­puters, he said.

“It’s a simple thing per­haps over­looked in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, but it’s very important.”

Tucker was basing his com­ments on a study involving eight pupils with dys­lexia or severe read­ing prob­lems at Kirkwood Intermediate in 2007.

The aim of the study was to test a phonics-based read­ing pro­gramme developed by Tucker, which he has just released in a series of three books called From Sound to Print.

The biggest prob­lem faced by boys in learn­ing to read was their lack of hand­writ­ing skills, Tucker said.

“There were no abnor­mal­it­ies in the under­stand­ing of the pro­gramme with the group, but pro­gress was slow due to their lack of hand­writ­ing skill.”

It was neces­sary to give the boys a brief hand­writ­ing exer­cise before each les­son, which saw them improve and rap­idly over­take the girls whose read­ing skills were way ahead of the boys to begin with.

Tucker also wants schools to return to teach­ing read­ing based solely on phonics, which encour­ages pupils to sound out words.

He believes improve­ments made by pupils dur­ing his study back up his position.

Early edu­ca­tion in phonics would mean learn­ing dif­fi­culties, includ­ing dys­lexia, could be largely pre­ven­ted, he said.

“A lack of phonics in schools in the past two or three dec­ades has res­ul­ted in lots and lots of people hav­ing dis­ab­il­it­ies, which I believe could be traced to that.”

There has been much debate about the use of phonics in schools, but many schools choose a broader approach to read­ing, which includes using lan­guage and visual clues along­side phonics.

University of Canterbury College of Education Professor Garry Hornby said a return to teach­ing read­ing based solely on phonics would be a ret­ro­grade step. However, it was prob­ably a good way to teach remedial read­ing programmes.

Hornby, who eval­u­ated Tucker’s study, said the chil­dren did show good improve­ment in read­ing after com­plet­ing the pro­gramme. It did not con­vert them into aver­age read­ers, but they def­in­itely improved.

Kirkwood Intermediate prin­cipal Phil Tappenden sup­ports a broader approach to teach­ing pupils how to read, but he said Tucker’s phonics-based pro­gramme had some not­able suc­cess with a small group.

The over­all level of hand­writ­ing had prob­ably decreased over the years with the advent of com­puters, but schools had lim­ited time each day and they had to pri­or­it­ise the areas that best met the needs of chil­dren, he said.