How and Why to Teach Handwriting in Middle and High School

It is possible that you, in the 21st century, were never taught how to teach handwriting in any of your education courses—I know I wasn’t, and that was 50 years ago. In my early days of teaching, I just accepted the time-consuming struggle to read irregular, messy handwriting.

Before the digital revolution, handwriting was a prominent part of the K–12 curriculum. Today, handwriting gets little to no instructional attention after the first years of schooling. We have much to gain from teaching and promoting neat, legible handwriting across the curriculum and across the grade spans, especially now that our primary defense against plagiarism and student overdependence on AI is to have students write in class, by hand.

handwriting Basics

The Latin script that we use in written English (along with Arabic numerals) conventionally forms all symbols in a top-to-bottom progression, with the starting point at either the top of the space, almost the top of the space, or halfway down the space.

The most basic printed handwriting style combines only three major graphic elements: straight lines, circles, and half circles. Minor elements include dots and cross marks, as in the letter t. Cursive writing uses the element of curved lines in addition to full and half circles, but otherwise it is the same. Note the fact that some rounded elements are drawn with a clockwise movement (b, h, j, m, n, p, r, 2, 3, 5), and others are drawn with a counterclockwise movement (a, c, d, e, f, g, o, q, s, u, w, 6, 8, 9). This alternation of circular direction can be a source of difficulty.

Throughout my career, I’ve relied on The Writing Resource Book, by Nellie Thomas, published in 1967 (and no longer in print)—a wise and practical book to guide my teaching practice and philosophy. Here are three handwriting basics, adapted from Thomas’s book.

1. Orthography. This comes from the Greek prefix ortho, meaning “correct, regular, straight,” and the Greek root graph + y = “writing.” Symbols must align consistently to be meaningful and clearly understood. All letters and digits sit on the line.

2. A symbol contrast signals meaning. All tall letters are taller than all short letters. All capital letters are tall letters. All tails go below the line.

3. Distinctive features of symbols signal meaning. All circles are closed; all open letters are open. All dotted letters are dotted; all crossed letters are crossed.

Teaching Handwriting

By not teaching handwriting, we resign ourselves to deciphering hard-to-read and difficult-to-assess student work, and we give up our chance to help students improve their writing. We generally understand that students with poor handwriting are more likely to make errors in spelling and math and can suffer academically from low self-esteem. But recent research shows that everyone benefits from the learning advantages of handwriting. Handwriting activates more cognitive, motor, and sensory neural circuits than typing, despite the speed and efficiency of typing.

Prepare your verbal cues by speaking out loud as you practice slowly drawing each symbol many times yourself.

• Where does the symbol begin?
• In what direction and in what shape does the symbol continue?
• Do I have to lift my pen to finish the symbol?
• If so, where do I place my pen to get to the finish?
• Where does the symbol end?
• Begin again and repeat.

The Handwriting Lesson: Practice Letter by Letter, Digit by Digit

The essence of handwriting instruction is guided practice: carefully modeling and verbally cueing the drawing motion of every letter and digit as students practice at their desks, carefully repeating a row of each symbol.

Handwriting paper used in primary grades uses bold lines, faint lines, and dotted lines to guide the consistent “drawing” of letter shapes with their systematic differences in placement on the line: tall letters being tall, short letters being short, tails going below the line. I encouraged my middle school students to skip every other line on standard, wide-ruled notebook paper. Recently I have used wide-ruled notebook paper for handwriting practice with much younger students, using three lines per row to practice large, evenly proportioned letters. If I were to use this strategy with older students, I would have them use a ruler to mark every group of three lines to prepare for this exercise, perhaps as preparation for a poster, report cover, or other graphic design assignment.

After you draw and verbally cue the conventional shape and formation of a symbol, instruct students to repeatedly draw that letter, slowly, at their desks, aiming for a row of perfect examples. Walk the room and give encouragement and praise as students carefully draw each symbol, repeatedly, until the line is filled. No erasing, just try again. Using pens for handwriting practice promotes psycho-motor flow. Without erasers, students learn to simply keep on going, preserving the record of their effort and their improvement.

Fair warning, this exercise can be tedious! To support endurance, have students take a deep breath and shake out their fingers after completing a row. My sixth-grade students in the 1970s could sustain this guided practice of their cursive writing for a full 30 minutes at a time. To keep it interesting, some students chose to do the exercises with their nondominant hand!

Valuing HandWritten Work

This handwriting practice should create the foundation for handwriting standards and expectations in your class. The most basic expectation is this: Written work is accepted only if it is a student’s best work. (Legibility and neatness will vary with individual students.) Unacceptable work may be rewritten and resubmitted within a reasonable time frame.

Assignments that require neat and careful handwriting are flexible and can support many different learning goals. For example, letter-writing assignments to school and community leaders are relevant at any time across the curriculum, and reliance on handwritten classroom visuals such as word walls, anchor charts, announcements, assignments, accolades, etc., promotes the value of handmade materials. When students are required to copy assignments, questions, problems, or notes, we can add value to acts of handwriting by checking the copied work for accuracy and legibility.

Handwriting is the foundation of ‘Thinking in Ink’

The aphorism “Writing is thinking in ink,” an expression generally attributed to British graphic designer Alan Fletcher, captures the essential power of writing as a tool to understand one’s own mind, one’s own thoughts. Adding writing steps at key stages of a learning activity supports student engagement and clarity. Writing is a universal tool of human cognition, and we serve our students well when we teach and value handwritten material.