Jack, aged 7 years with Dyspraxia and Dyslexia

Since Reception, Jack has experienced significant difficulty with motor planning and the control of fine motor movements for handwriting. In addition to this, Jack also found acquiring accurate awareness of the sounds of letters difficult, something that also impacted on his motivation for writing, which meant he preferred to avoid activities related to letters and handwriting.

To engage Jack in handwriting, and to build his confidence in his understanding of letters, an extended period of time was spent on the cognitive games and activities building Jacks knowledge of the animal categories, and his recall for why the letters were grouped together.

As his confidence increased fine motor activities were introduced, the turning point came when Jack himself began practising his letters, since then he has gone on to master accurate letter formation, and he is now in Year 2 writing in a full cursive script, mastering the spatial placement of his letters. The speed of Jack’s writing remains hampered by his difficulty with spelling, but as his writing grows in automaticity this will help relieve some of the stress.

For children like Jack, who from an early age believe that they 'can't do it' the HTW offers a unique opportunity for the children to build their understanding and knowledge in the absence of needing to write the letters down. Helping to organise Jack’s understanding of his letters, facilities his natural curiosity to 'have a go'.

How did the HTW help Jack?

Jack learnt to:

• Build his confidence in handwriting without needing to use a pen and paper
• Grow in self confidence as his knowledge increased
• Write each individual letter of the alphabet with the lead in and lead out line
• Join the letters together to make words
• Write all letters with the correct formation automatically
• Begin to form letters and short sentences
• Feel less fearful of handwriting