Why should my school use TW Handwriting Programme?

For Teachers

Hemispheres Think Write is an ideal handwriting programme for schools; it is fun, exciting and engages children actively in their learning.  The programme is developmentally appropriate for children in stage 1, and is inherently flexible to enable clear and easy differentiation for the different learning levels within a mainstream classroom. 
The programme is easily administered, starting with as little as 15 minutes a day the children will soon learn the foundations for handwriting, enabling the delivery time to be reduced to 2-3 times per week to maintain the children's learning. 
This programme offers interactive games to build a strong cognitive understanding of the concept of handwriting, it can be delivered as a whole class, in small groups and for those that need a little extra support on an individual basis. 

 Recommended practice:

• Introduce the games and activities, each day for 15 minutes.  5 minutes introducing the characters and then 10 minutes practicing and reinforcing the connection to movement and letters
• Introduce the cognitive categories and games after having covered the single phonemes, so children are ready for learning letter formation.
• Consider using the programme every morning for 15 minutes per day to ensure consistency and repetition
• Build activity stations into the 15 minutes per day so children can practice the skills in different ways
• Build individual activities for those children who require a slower pace of learning or more repetition to consolidate their learning

For Learning Support

The Hemispheres Think Write programme works.  The active integration of games, activities and play to help children build the necessary cognitive, motor and visual processing skills are an inherent part of this programme. This programme can be adapted and changed to build, to meet the individual needs for children with all levels of difficulty, from learning how to form the letters, to building cognitive structures to support retrieval and recall of the rules and visual processing, planning and organization skills for spatial placement. 

What sets Hemispheres think write apart, is that is addresses the three component areas of handwriting: starting with the primary skill of cognitive understanding of the rules that govern letter formation, size and spatial position establishing a strong cognitive understanding before introducing letter formation and motor planning.  This offers children the opportunity to build confidence in their understanding, whilst consolidating their fine motor skills, so they can bring both together at the right time to ensure success in using the right motor plan for letter formation.

Why it works for children with learning needs:

• Easy step by step approach to support individual educational targets
• Deliverable in small groups or individual basis
• Easy targets and games can be used at home to support learning targets
• Parent resources to help support the programme at home
• The emphasis on categorization and linking supports the natural cognitive skills, and simplifies the 26 alphabet letters into three letter formation groups and one group for spatial placement.
• The programme uses games, and play to establish or reorganize a child's thinking skills. 
• The games are fun and interactive helping to reduce stress and anxiety for those children who are frustrated and struggling
• Cognitive appreciation and awareness can be used to help children over come any motor planning difficulties that affect letter formation
• The games help reorganize stored knowledge and help children to gain confidence in what they know
• The cognitive structure supports the role of the working memory and helps build speed in retrieval and recall.