OTS 116: Challenging Typical Handwriting Traditions

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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 116 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.

Have you ever thought of having your students be the handwriting teachers?

By having students apply what they learned during an OT session, they can go back into the classroom to share the letter stories and formations with everyone… including the teacher! This is a great functional way to help them solidify what they learned.

Today, Cheryl Bregman is here to discuss some common handwriting norms on which she is flipping the script. We also dive into how children have been affected with dysgraphia and pseudo dysgraphia and how a collaborative approach can help.

Tune in to learn about an awesome handwriting program Cheryl has created that can help a child learn to write in five weeks!

Tune in to learn the following objectives:

• Learners will identify why it is beneficial to start with learning lowercase letters

• Learners will identify the reasons children may present with pseudo dysgraphia

• Learners will identify and understand how reading and writing collide and impact one another

• Learners will identify how handwriting heroes use a multi-sensory approach and how it is beneficial for all children, especially those with learning disabilities.

• Learners will identify specific assessments that do not correlate with handwriting outcomes.

Guest Bio

Cheryl Bregman, MS, OTR/L

Cheryl Bregman, MS, OTR/L earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a Master of Science degree in Technology in Special Education from Johns Hopkins University. Her specific research interests involve handwriting development and the integration of assistive technology in school settings. With over 25 years of experience, Cheryl has extensive experience working with children who have developmental coordination disorders (DCD), learning disabilities, and attention issues.

Quotes

“We really do need to think about starting with lowercase, particularly for students with learning disabilities… They had a really hard time with differentiating between upper and lowercase” - Cheryl Bregman, MS, OTR/L

“If we can make handwriting easier, more automatic to our students, then they can use that brainpower for higher level skills” - Cheryl Bregman, MS, OTR/L

“Look more carefully at the students and what their needs are, not to just confine it to whether or not something is legible. Look beyond that, so you can help that child functionally” - Cheryl Bregman, MS, OTR/L

“It's not that they necessarily have dysgraphia… they're in front of a computer for two-three years, and all they did was try and type, so they haven't had the experience” - Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L

“Practice makes permanent, not perfect” -Jayson Davies, M.A., OTR/L

Resources:

• Decosta Writing Protocol

• Handwriting Heroes

• Handwriting Heroes Blog

Episode Transcript

Expand to view the full episode transcript.

Cheryl Bregman   

And if we can make handwriting easier more automatic for our students, then they can use that brainpower for higher level skills. 

Jayson Davies   

Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of the otschoolhouse. Comcast, so happy to have you here today. The day that this is being released, is actually national handwriting day. So it is only fitting that we do have an episode about handwriting today. A few weeks ago, we talked about dysgraphia, and in this episode, we are talking with Cheryl Bregman, creator of the handwriting heroes app that was Cheryl, that you actually heard leading into my intro today. And that's a very powerful statement that she said there. She's basically saying that if we help students to better understand the physical act of writing, even the mental act of actually getting legible letters, legible sentences on the page, then they can use their brain for higher level activities. Think maybe writing longer paragraphs, entire essays, or maybe even doing other things while writing, like listening to the teacher or following whatever's going on on the board. So I'm super excited today to bring on Cheryl Bregman. She's going to talk to us all about handwriting and maybe some of those old school traditions that maybe we need to rethink a little bit, things like starting with uppercase letters and maybe about spacing and whatnot. We're going to talk about some of those age old traditions and maybe how we can rethink what we are doing with our students. So let's go ahead and Cue the intro music, and as soon as we come back, we will jump into our interview with Cheryl Bregman. 

Amazing Narrator   

Hello and welcome to the otschoolhouse podcast. Your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson. Davies class is officially in session. 

Jayson Davies   

Cheryl, welcome to the otschoolhouse podcast. How are you doing today? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Hi, Jason, thank you. I'm really happy to be here. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, I'm just excited to have you here as well. We're talking about handwriting today, more importantly, or I think more importantly, I'm excited because we're going to talk a little bit about some age old traditions that maybe aren't always the best examples, and then maybe follow up with some some better ideas and some better things. But first I have to acknowledge your beautiful, wonderful sleeping dog behind you. I know everyone listening to the podcast can't see him, but he's just adorable back there. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Thank you. That's Milo. He's a sheepadoodle and my constant companion there. 

Jayson Davies   

I love it. I like to say this is a dog friendly podcast, so I'm excited to have him here with us today. All right, so, so tell us a little bit about yourself. You are an occupational therapist, but tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Sure. Well, I've been working in pediatrics for the past 25 years, in schools and in private practice, and particularly with children with learning disabilities and dysgraphia, I've also loved product and curriculum design, and I came up with a method for teaching handwriting that my students really responded to. I subsequently worked with animators and musicians, developers, artists to develop what is now a rather robust handwriting program called handwriting heroes. 

Jayson Davies   

Wow. And so you've developed that over basically 20 years of experience. It sounds like 

Cheryl Bregman   

exactly it's been, you know, a labor of love. 

Jayson Davies   

I know the feels definitely right whenever you create something from the ground up. We've all we've been there. We've started with nothing, and now we have something. And it just feels good, doesn't it, 

Cheryl Bregman   

that's wonderful, especially, you know, to see it sort of almost being completed. You know, it will never quite be done, because, you know, I'm a revisionist at heart, and always keep refining things. Absolutely, 

Jayson Davies   

absolutely, no, I again. This is not a question I plan to ask you, but I know from my experience with the OT school house, they this program. The otschoolhouse in general has allowed me to have conversations that I never would have had, to talk to people all around the world. And so I want to ask you, with the handwriting heroes you know, do you recall any specific email or any chat where someone was just so appreciative and really just was excited about your product, and wanted to share that with you. 

Cheryl Bregman   

 I've had a lot of specifically from mothers, actually, who whose children have been, you know, first time writers and who haven't, you know, ever been successful at writing prior. I think they're incredibly grateful, and where, especially when the you know, their children have been completely averse to writing, and now they love writing. So that's a huge compliment. And you know, I love hearing from them. I just recently saw Instagram. Post from a parent who I don't know, but it was amazing how she shows the child just and she says something to the effect of handwriting heroes. Has got this child dedicated to saying the letters correctly, and that's a big deal. 

Jayson Davies   

Wow. So not even necessarily writing, just saying the letters correctly. Is that what you just said, right? 

Cheryl Bregman   

 Well, saying letter stories, actually. So he happens to be, you know, you can see him in the video, and he's holding the different, it looks like cardboard letters and and doing the different strokes related to, to to the letter story saying I skydive down and get its.on top, and very animated. And just lovely to see that. 

Jayson Davies   

I love that. That's awesome. You know, we are going to dive more into that. I'd love to hear more about the letter stories. That sounds great. I love that you're putting storytelling into the writing process. That's awesome. And we'll get into that in just a bit. But I wanted to start off this podcast by kind of, I kind of alluded to it a little bit ago, but digging into some of those age old trends that have been around handwriting that we all have heard at some point or another with school age children, that maybe some of the research that you've done has kind of debunked that. And so I just want to ask you about what are some What are a few things that are common practice that maybe you're you're flipping the script on?  

Cheryl Bregman   

Well, there's a couple. The first trend relates to OTS feeling like they're handwriting teachers, and that this role is somehow demeaning, if you consider the fact that handwriting, automaticity, is the most important predictor of length and quality of written composition in elementary school, and that 30 to 60% of each school day involves handwriting. We may want to reconsider how we feel about our involvement in handwriting, and that's not to say that the status quo is ideal or they aren't, ways to improve it. The next trend that I want to mention is that of teaching uppercase first. In the context of today's classroom, where kindergarten students are expected to write from early on, I feel that we really do need to think about starting with lowercase, particularly for students with learning disabilities. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, why specific to learning disabilities? 

Cheryl Bregman   

I saw that my students who had learning disabilities when they were older, they had a really hard time with differentiating between upper and lower case. They were often writing only in uppercase, sort of stuck in that mode and still mixing the two scripts. So when one teaches lowercase, first gets that automatic and then teaches uppercase, you don't run into that issue because they have their lowercase cemented.  

Jayson Davies   

Yeah. And as I think about that, I wrap my head about more we do use more lowercase than we do use uppercase, right uppercase we use at the beginning of a sentence or with a proper noun, but typically we're using lowercase unless it's the letter i in a word. So yeah, okay. 

Cheryl Bregman   

It's a really functional script that teachers are needing kids to use sooner rather than later. 

Jayson Davies   

Gotcha. Okay. So we talked about, first of all was OTs, you know, being the handwriting teacher and having a little bit of a bias against that, or whatever you want to call it. I want to come back to that. I do. But then the second one was using lowercase letters. What else have you found?  

Cheryl Bregman   

Well, I also think there's a trend to do sensory motor training to address handwriting problems. And really, research has shown that this bottom up approach that works on underlying skills, so midline crossing, fine motor control, pencil grasp and so on, it's not as effective as direct, explicit handwriting practice. And I feel like we need to get away from feeling as though we need to do those underlying skills for handwriting remediation. 

Jayson Davies   

Okay, and I feel like that one really ties back to that first one that I wanted to jump back into, right is handwriting versus using the sensory motor approach. Sometimes those kind of go hand in hand. Some people want to do the direct handwriting instruction, or they want to do the sensory motor approach, or vice versa. And so I want to, I want to dive into those two concepts a little bit more. Because whenever I hear someone say, we're not handwriting teachers, right? And I agree, we're not necessarily handwriting teachers, but 2030, years ago, we would have loved to have been called the handwriting teacher because we were not even in the schools. We would have loved to get into those schools, and I think that has gotten us into those schools, but now we're so overworked. Right? And we're so bogged down that we're trying to almost pull away from it, because we're getting every single student that has a handwriting concern, and it's a little overwhelming for people. So I want to ask you to elaborate a little bit more on that. What you mean by our role in the schools with handwriting? Should we be doing more direct ot with students, one to one, with handwriting? Should we provide more of a consultative role? What do you think? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Well, I think it's a sort of complex question. We have been working a lot with one on one sessions or small groups, and not working enough in a collaborative model with the teacher, so I feel like we should be co teaching with the teacher, showing best practices, modeling and showing how multi sensory Teaching assists handwriting and slowly really move the responsibility of teaching handwriting back into the hands of teachers, and there's also a sense that we're responsible for all handwriting, and that's come to bear, primarily because of Common Core and Teachers feeling overwhelmed themselves, they're struggling to fit the curriculum in that they they need to fit in, and so they've given handwriting a side shift, unfortunately, unfortunately for students, and they're now those kids who, who may not have had handwriting problems, Do, because I actually call it a pseudo dysgraphia, Where? Where? Because they have not had the instruction that they needed in handwriting, they now have a pseudo disability, or a so called disability that they wouldn't have had if it weren't for direct, explicit instruction that the teacher provided. So it's something where I feel like the occupational therapist can guide the teachers. We just have to take more control of that role and modify it to suit ourselves, not to suit ourselves, but to suit the scenario, and help the teacher reincorporate handwriting, but still be very much involved, and especially when it comes to the kids who have the true disabilities, where we can assist and, you know, provide more intervention and and and more strengthening. So just a more collaborative model would be helpful in that scenario. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I mean, just to kind of flip the role, right? If 90% of our referrals were coming for a student using scissors, we'd probably be saying to all the teachers, we're not scissor cutting therapists, right? But we are occupational therapists. And as you alluded to, students are handwriting 30 to 60 or more percent of the day, depending on their grade level, and there is research out there that shows that. I know that research now is starting to get a little bit older, and maybe kids are using more technology, but still, they are definitely writing in the classroom, and so that is a very important occupation. But I think as we continue on, you're going to share with us even more about how the benefits that handwriting can have potentially over typing, and I think that's also important to remember when we're in an IEP and we're considering when to maybe transition away from handwriting to typing or or vice versa. So yeah, thanks for thanks for elaborating on the collaboration.  

Cheryl Bregman   

And I'll clarify, um, Jayson, I think handwriting is still very much part of the elementary classroom. What has happened to make things sort of worse is covid And where there was the span of two years, ultimately, where the kids were not on, you know, not using paper and pencil, and they were on their Chromebooks or their desks desktops. And now we're seeing kids, even in third grade, who cannot handle it whatsoever. And and schools are really struggling, and obviously OTS are struggling with their caseloads. And it's. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, and I think that kind of lends itself to that term that you use, that pseudo dysgraphia, because they weren't. It's not that they necessarily have dysgraphia, but like you said, they were in front of a computer for two, three years, and all they did was try and type so they haven't had the experience. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Cool. So just to recap really quickly, we talked about the gripe that some OTS have with handwriting or being the handwriting teacher, per se. We talked a little bit about sensory motor let's, let's dive into that one. A little bit, actually more. I know there's research out there, and you kind of alluded to it right, where sensory motor approaches don't necessarily lead to handwriting. Improvements. Personally, when I'm working with students, a lot of times we do a sensory motor type of warm up, or something like that. Is that something that is fair game? Or what's your take on using sensorimotor within intervention? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Absolutely, I think that the more can be incorporated with the handwriting activity, the better we're working oftentimes with so called low tone children who haven't got the muscle strength or the dexterity to to coordinate activities, they've got, you know, possibly generalized motor planning difficulties. So depending on their goals, you can, you know, hit a number of those goals with sensory motor activities. But you know, ultimately, you have to have that direct handwriting practice. Without that practice, it's not going to get better, and also to to incorporate more sensorimotor activities within the handwriting so, so, for example, using a thumbtack to pin punch letters, that would be a great way to incorporate fine motor skills and and a handwriting task. So as long as you know you're not sort of straying too far away and and assuming that by working with Thera party, you're going to make substantial handwriting gains. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, yeah. And I, as you were saying that I love that, because that's definitely something I've done, right, using something to poke holes to make letters, or whatever it might be, I've used toothpicks, right? You can kind of hold it like a pencil and and poke holes. On the flip side, I've done the opposite too, where I've taken the letter, letter producing out of it, but kept the pencil in it, right? We've all think about like coloring activities. You're taking the writing out of it, but you're you're still using a crown, a writing utensil. But also, I've done things where it's just like pencil activities, but has nothing to do with actually putting the pencil on the paper, so just getting them used to a pencil, like we'll do little like pencil flips. Can you twist the pencil from your thumb and your index finger to your thumb and your pinky right, doing opposition, different activities. So I think that could be a great warm up. You're still, at least using the writing tool, which eventually, of course, is a a process of writing. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Right? Absolutely. And, you know, it reminds me there's like a small video, like a caterpillar, like a caterpillar inchworm, that you sort of scoot your fingers up, yeah, I love that. And then the rotation, so absolutely, using those to improve the dexterity, you know, and that comes into play when you're erasing, or when you then, you know, flipping and makes it more efficient, but to your point where you said taking the pencil out of the writing, that's completely valid. And I will say that for younger children, or children who have got significant impairments where they're not ready for paper pencil tasks, I will often do sensory motor activities or air writing in order for them to teach the letter form or the letter formation without even touching a paper and pencil, so they have got Confidence to learn that letter. They know the letter story even before they've touched a pencil and paper, and it just gives them confidence, that it takes away the anxiety, firstly, of the paper pencil task, because they've often had negative connotations with that, or there's a sense of permanency when you're writing with paper and pencil, that that Mark is there for everyone to see, and it's embarrassing for the kids who can't write. And you take that away, you separate the processes, and it makes for a much happier child who's who's suddenly prepared to work on handwriting, even though they don't know they're working on handwriting. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, definitely great. I want to jump into pencil graphs. But before I do that, I want to ask you, are there any other age old traditions, age old adages that we that you wanted to address before we move on? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Not that I can think of right now. You know they are. But.  

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, no. Well, we're going to talk a lot about a lot more about handwriting in this podcast. So we'll get into more things when pencil grip comes up. There are I feel like we are moving more toward the trend that is common knowledge that you don't need a perfect pencil grip to write functionally. I know, just a few weeks ago, Taylor Swift's video, her new music video, which is trending like crazy, right? Because she is the cross quadrilateral, something grip. I don't even remember. I didn't watch the video, but you know, that's coming out. And so what's your take on pencil grips? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Right? I saw that on social media. One, but also didn't watch the video. But from a research perspective, they've also shown that it's not that important. And again, like if you have a child with weak muscles and their pencil grip is going to reflect that the child essentially isn't defying you or choosing to hold their pencil incorrectly, so they can't magically change that just because you're asking them to. And if you think about the reason that we want a functional grasp, it's to it's essentially to prevent pain and fatigue when writing. So if a student has a fixed grasp and gets pain when they're writing, then I often show them an alternate grasp, like the stenographers grasp, or I'll encourage them to use pencil grips. And I'm not asking the child to change their grip, but rather to use a different grasp, even if it's for a short period of time to give the overworked muscles a break. So and that's often the case with older students where where they're coming to me saying, my hand is fatiguing. I can drive for long periods of times and can't keep up. 

Jayson Davies   

That was a great little nugget. I don't think I've ever worked with a student and asked them to use a different pencil grip temporarily, and I like what you just said, especially for those older students, right? They know that their hand is bugging them. They just need, like, a break. And so how can we give them, give their hand a break without breaking away from the writing process, per se, right? They need to get their work done. They can't they need to take an extended break. But can they just hold the pencil a little bit different that is still functional for them. And take that, give their whatever finger five minute break because they're using a slightly different grasp. I like that correct. 

Cheryl Bregman   

It just gives them that pause or pause, but they're still continuing to work. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, even when I think about that, I mean, it just brings up so many ideas, because you could work with a teacher, and you know, a lot of writing, especially for older students, isn't pencil to paper. A lot of it is planning. And so, you know what? Maybe you're taking a break from writing, but you're doing a slightly different part of the assignment. If they really do need a complete break from writing, right? Maybe they're just doing a different part of the writing process, per se, right? 

Cheryl Bregman   

I often, you know, say to my truly dysgraphic children, who are usually boys, that all they need is, you know, a good secretary to assist in the classroom, and, you know, get the work done. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah. And you know what? Siri is coming a long way right now, if you're listening, we have something that's recording us right now. You know, Zoom has transcription into it, and there's a lot of technology out there that can help people with with the difficulties we all use, you know, we all use technology nowadays, and we all use it to amplify our own abilities. So why should we prevent students from doing similar activities, absolutely. All right. Well, the next question, I kind of wanted to dive in with you, because I know your program isn't completely about writing, and there's also some reading components with with language. And so I wanted to ask you how reading and writing collide to impact each other. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Sure. So for reading, writing a letter helps one to learn its shape and spatial orientation, and this letter perception contributes to better reading. It helps to connect letter symbol and letter names and sounds. So I've often heard otschoolhouse com read then we don't need to teach them how to handwrite. And I really consider that a missed opportunity, because I've had so many instances where learning to write has been a starting point, a jumping off point for a child's reading, and it's a safe place to start from, and learning, perhaps from a position of strength, where they now know how to form the letter L. They know that the letter L landed on a lemon. And there's that, firstly, the alliteration, they've learned the letter name, they've learned the letters, what the letter sound makes. And then there's that causal sort of relationship where it extends into just knowing the alphabet, the alphabetic principle, and yeah, it gives the child more confidence when, when they're posed with, perhaps something that's even harder being reading. Yeah. And then when it comes to writing, it's important to recognize that all the skills that go into writing, we don't often think about them you but you have to think about like the child's thinking about what they want to say, how to spell the words, how to. Organize a sentence, and then on top of that, they have to work out how to form the letters, where the letters go on the line, which way they face, how hard to press the pencil. So it's really taxing on one's working memory. And if we can make handwriting easier, more automatic for our students, then they can use that brainpower for higher level skills, but if but forehand writing to become automatic, the letters must be formed in the most efficient way. And I don't think that's often realized. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah and I really you know, as you say, that that last little part that you said, you know, I think of those kids where we pull them aside, or the teacher pulls them aside, and they can write neatly one sentence, and then when they go back to their desk to write a paragraph, it's just gone like it's just a hot mess again, right? And that's because they haven't really automated the process. You know, when they're really thinking about legibility, they can make it happen, but when they're thinking about the assignment that they're supposed to be writing about To Kill a Mockingbird, or whatever it is that they're writing a paragraph about. They're not worried about letter formation, spacing, sizing, all that good stuff. They're worried about getting the words from their head onto the page in some way. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Right. And they can't devote that working memory, that attention to letter formation in that instance. So that's why the letter formation component falls apart. They've only got so much reserve. And unless it's automatized, we're going to have a child who, who's handwriting, deterior deteriorates at that point. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah. So, so I want to push on this. I like this topic that we're at right here, and so OTs, I have, I have had conversations with OTS. I mean, I've been in that conundrum state of mind too. I'm like, What do I do with this student right there? They can write legibly when, when they're with me, but they go back to class. It's not legible. Do I discharge the student? Do I put them on console? Do I continue direct, what have you found to for you? What has worked with some of your students? I know it does. What works with one student works with one student. But is there something that you found that kind of helps with that? I guess automatic writing, I guess we could call it? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Sure so, A couple of things I just want to mention that you you touched on there one being potentially, we shouldn't be working alone in a room with a student, because it's just not a functional scenario. They're not producing schoolwork in that scenario. So when we see them and they can write leggedly, that's a false narrative. Essentially, I agree, because you've taken away all distractions, and you're making it essentially non functional, but, but you're coming up with a a result that is wonderful, and you're being able to then say, Look, you know, I've got this wonderful result. My students legible. He doesn't need ot not the case. Only in a functional environment. If we get a functional example of legibility and speed, then we can discharge that student. Or then we should think about discharging that student. It's it's function, you know, can't be defined just by legibility. Anyone can write legibly, even a dysgraphic student, can write legibly with a lot of cognitive energy and with a lot of effort put into that letter formation. But take that ability for him to, you know, focus that hard and to devote that much attention to letter formation, it, you know, and putting back in the classroom. It's not a it's not a functional scenario anymore. So the second thing you asked was whether I found, you know, interventions possibly that could could address that. So for a lot of students, what helps is working on automaticity with with alphabet sequencing. So I do a lot of handwriting where the child and I'll sort of motivate them to write the alphabet with good formation, but quickly, sometimes I'll put a stopwatch on and we'll, we'll graph the, you know, decrease in in speed. Or I've even used like a fidget spinner, and I spin the fidget spinner, and they have to do it faster than the fidget spinner. I love that. They love that. And, you know, I've gotten fantastic decreases in speed because of that same thing. I've got eight timers with different speeds that they run out just to make it more of a game, but that said doing that alphabet repeatedly and then. Also, I do pentagrams, so where they write sentences that have got all the letters in the alphabet. Just to improve, you try to improve the the speed that they're forming the letters in an efficient way. And that's why we want correct letter formation. And it's not because, you know, we're being pedantic and saying, this is, you know, something I, you know, insist upon. It's because it's writing a letter consistently, and in the best sequence, shows improved speed. So just and also practice, just five to 10 minutes of practice, I'll say the kids who, whose families I work with in private practice, who do do that practice. It's, it's a substantial difference, you know, related to the kids who don't. Yeah, they're developing that muscle memory and improving their speed. But I'll also say that they have to be practicing correctly at a formation. There's a phrase precise practice makes perfect. I don't know if you've heard that. 

Jayson Davies   

 Yeah, yeah. I've always heard, you know, practice makes permanent, not perfect, unless you're doing it right, right. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Exactly. Whereas you know, practice makes permanent, they, you know, writing year after year, day and so much of their days filled with writing, that when they write with bad habits, those are going to become permanent Exactly, 

Jayson Davies   

exactly. So, you know, two things that kind of came to my mind as you were talking, as I kind of alluded to you, as we were jumping on the call. I like to think about what John Jessica, whoever's listening to this podcast, what they might want to ask based upon what you said. And one of the things that I have struggled with at times is is having a child write the alphabet as quickly as they can, is that a therapeutic intervention, right? Like, what is the difference between us asking a student to write the alphabet quicker than a spinner can run out of spinning. Or, you know, how is that a therapeutic intervention? Because I'm on the same page as you, but I want to hear your your idea. Why? Why is it something for the OT to do and not something for the parent to do? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Right, or for the teacher, for that matter? Yeah, sure. And I think there's a distinction between what I would consider the 70 to 80% of children who can learn with given a systematic, structured intervention like program, those children with you know that teacher's direction are going to learn to write, and with practicing activities, practicing words and phrases, they're going to improve their automaticity and their speed. And then the OTs, I feel like, are responsible for those you know. Let's say, you know, children who really do struggle and need more. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, the 1010, 20% whatever it might be, 

Cheryl Bregman   

exactly, exactly. So I think you know. But ultimately, we're not born with the ability to read and write. It's not innate, and it has to be taught, and so it has to, you know, do with more differentiation and finding out who actually needs the OT intervention and who needs that additional creativity that we offer, or the repetition or the multi sensory learning strategies, that's the distinction that should be made. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, definitely. And you know, as occupational therapists, you alluded to, right, we're doing an evaluation to determine what area we need to work on, and we might find that it's not a visual perceptual difficulty that the student has, maybe it's a visual motor or vice versa, whatever it might be, but that is leading us to choose this intervention as opposed to something else. And to be quite honestly, I had never thought about doing that activity that you had talked about. And I'm an occupational therapist, so I doubt I don't know how many teachers out there have thought about doing something like that, and then the way that you implement it, I think, is different from the way that someone who is not an OT might implement it. So absolutely, I really like that idea. I'm gonna steal that one. But do you also, as an occupational therapist, maybe you're doing that. You're timing the child right, getting them to race themselves, per se, do you also provide that as a sort of quote, unquote homework. I know something that you mentioned was that that five to 10 minute practice, unfortunately, especially as a school based, OTs right, we're typically seeing a kid at most once a week. So how do you incorporate that practice? 

Cheryl Bregman   

You have to work with a teacher. There's just, there's no way around it. I've often, whether it be a parent or a teacher, the main thing to address is when that practice is going to occur, and I try and do it when the child, for example, comes into the classroom, when there's that time that everyone's hustling and getting things ready and doing their own thing. To some degree, there's five minutes right there, because it's not instructional time, and there is, you know, the kids are fresh, and my homework does not take more than two minutes, and it's fun. It's done usually on a dry erase worksheet, so that, you know, there's no photocopying of papers that have to be done. They just, you know, take out their dry erase sheet. They practice the letters, and they're done. It has to be also very repetitive, very easy to execute. And you take away the task, or you know that it's burdensome on perhaps a teacher, and also make it the child responsibility. Bribery is a good idea. Where, currently I have a child working you know, every you know, actually we've extended to every you know, month now, but he gets Mountain View, if he's you know, got all his his work checked off by the teacher, and so it's his responsibility to get those checks done.  

Jayson Davies   

All right, all right. So I like the idea of definitely finding that time with the teacher. A lot of our students will be in general education, but maybe they also go to the RSP resource specialist, teacher or something like that. That's someone I will often collaborate with. A lot of times in RSP, there's multiple kids in, like, a small group, and I find that they do have some downtime, and so I will use that kind of to our Hey, you know, what? Is there any downtime in between two groups or whatever, where Johnny can just do the alphabet A few times? Here's a fidget spinner. He can even use this fidget spinner as a, you know, sand clock, or whatever. You know, the whole what are those called the sand timers. I don't even know. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Sand timer, yeah, timer, an egg timer, an egg timer 

Jayson Davies   

is that? I don't know, but anyways, basically, they're using a fidget as their fidget spinner as their timer, right? Yeah, you know. And that's something that we can collaborate with on a teacher, and that could potentially replace a 30 minute, one time a week direct treatment with that child. It may not, you may still need to do that direct treatment, but over time, a lot of OTS asked me, what do you do with consults? And these are ideas that what you could do with consults, right? You could be working with the teacher to put something in place in the classroom, right? 

Cheryl Bregman   

I've also used the time where my student, we have initially done like a direct session with them, and then go into the classroom and the student gets to teach the class or their small group, and they sharing the stories or the letter formations with the whole class. The teachers love it. They actually will often say, really, that's how former D I never knew, and you know, will have a lesson inside, the inside the classroom, or the small group, where they get to then retell what they've learned. And that's, you know, a really functional way to to get them to appreciate their learning, to solidify it. 

Jayson Davies   

Great, awesome. Thanks for that. I like that idea, right? Let the let the student become the teacher. I absolutely love it, all right? So we have two more overarching topics that I wanted to discuss today. One is assessments, and then the others, I want to really dive into your handwriting program a little bit. So starting with the assessments. Now, I know it has become pretty popular belief, right, that the VMI the bot to some of those assessments that don't even, yeah, you use a pencil to complete it, but has nothing to do with writing tasks don't really relate to handwriting. Sure, I think you have more information on that, right? 

Cheryl Bregman   

I definitely used to, I guess, like as a younger therapist, depend on those assessments. And I think what has happened, they haven't necessarily been updated, especially, you know, post pandemic. So I will often find improvements, functional improvements in legibility and fluency, for example. And then when I reassess my student with assessment. They're still in the first percentile, but they have the best handwriting in the classroom, so it's not necessarily telling the right story the same way that, yeah, the VMI shapes, for example, aren't you? Exactly prescriptive of success with with handwriting. And you know, brings up the another sort of myth, perhaps, that you need to have those seven or eight developmental shapes in place before you start handwriting. I often find that that is a barrier to have these children essentially waiting when their peers are moving along and learning how to handwrite, and then they're just further behind because they don't know how to make the diagonal line. And so, you know, as OTs, we're still working on pre pre writing and making a triangle when the rest of the class has moved on and they're working on the alphabet, and that's where you know what we had spoken about previously, where letter formation doesn't necessarily have to be a paper pencil activity, where we can do it in other with other means and just the speed of that has to hasten. We can't necessarily rely on, you know, what's so called, developmentally appropriate. It has to be more functionally appropriate as well, so that kids can get on par with their their peers. But you know, to get back to the assessments, I think, you know, pairing it with a standardized assessment is fine, as long as you're not counting on that assessment to give you too much information regarding handwriting. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, yeah. And do you ever use another tool that we've talked about a lot, or a few are the etch and the ths are some of the handwriting assessments. I know the thsr is standardized, the etch is not, but they at least look at handwriting. 

Cheryl Bregman   

I find them, you know, to be long to administer, and so I don't personally use them. I, you know, I have developed something called the Quick handwriting assessment, and it's literally just a dictation task and a copying task. The dictation task looks at the letters in their letter families so that one can pick out which there's oftentimes, like a letter family that a child is struggling with. They may be struggling with the letters that start like C or, you know, the diagonal letters. And by doing them in those groups, I quickly pull out which letter group that child might be struggling with. And then the copying task I do. It's a one minute copying task, and that gives me information on speed and fluency. And see, you know, that's a real barrier for the child. So I guess I've moved away from standardized testing just in favor of speed. 

Jayson Davies   

for the handwriting part of it, at least, exactly. Okay, very cool. Now, one last part of the assessment process, I guess you could call it that I want to talk about, because, I mean, we've already discussed a little bit, right? Is digital? AI to digitalization. If I can say that, right, people are going every which way. I mean, there's so many ways to get your words onto paper without a pencil these days, right? You can do speech to text. You can use a stylist, potentially, you can there's a anyway. There's a variety typing. So do you do evaluations at all? To the point where you're trying to figure out, should I focus more on going digital as opposed to writing. Do you do that? Or do you really focus on the handwriting part? 

Cheryl Bregman   

110% I actually, I will say that I, when I initially encountered, you know, children struggling with handwriting, my inclination was to completely veer towards assistive technology, so much so that I did a master's degree in technology in special ed, and I, you know, this is, you know, for another time, but I developed an application called a Willie pad. It was for the iPad, and that worked on that was word prediction, and it was a keyboard that one could modify and so on. So I really, you know, love assistive technology. I see it as a wonderful answer, especially for kids with dysgraphia. It, you know, with regards to word prediction, text, speech, speech to text, I think it's, you know, I think being struggling with handwriting in today's world is much easier than you know had, had you been around 10 years ago with the same condition, and it's definitely an outlet for for the kids who need it. I obviously sort of went back to handwriting. And the reason why that happened was I did notice how, how, what a big difference it made, even if a child could write their name. And you know, in terms of self esteem, kids want to be able to write their name, and then, you know, the same was true with, with the Association of reading and writing. If kids understand the letter form, there's a kinesthetic connection with with reading. And that importance to me was, you know, significant. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah. And you know what? I actually wanted to bring this up because in my email box the other day I actually popped into my email box was an email from you. It's an auto it's an auto sequence email from you, but it is a very helpful one that comes as part of being on your email list. And it was the three reasons why you focus on handwriting, even in this digital age. And so the three reasons were, and I'll let you elaborate on these were, it leads to increased memory handwriting does it uses more brain power than typing. And then your third reason was, actually writing by hand benefits the whole body. And I thought those were three great things, so I wanted to bring them up, and actually kind of let you, I mean, you already kind of alluded to a little bit of that, but I'd love to have you elaborate a little bit more. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Right? Well, these are all from, you know, actual studies that were were conducted, and one of the authors and researchers that I love reading is studies by Virginia Berninger, and she's done a lot of work with handwriting and the brain, and she's basically made real advances that show the connection Between handwriting and how, for example, students will remember more when they're taking notes, when they're handwriting, than when they're typing. So when you're typing, you act more as a you're just taking notes, whereas, because you can't write as quickly as you type, you have to sort of summarize what you've written, and therefore you're thinking about what the lecturer has said, and you're making, you know, a consolidated or summarized version of that note. So it's a more active process. So yeah, that you know, comes into using your brain power and improves your memory and the benefits for the whole body. Yeah, it just, it increases the way again, because of, it's a kind of static activity, it increases that. I'm not sure if you, you know, you've ever sort of rewritten notes just for the sake of, for the sake of learning or highlighted or repeated, you know, writing a word that's a kinesthetic learning mechanism. So it's all really beneficial. I just remembered as well in terms of assessments, I just want to go back to that, because there is, you know, one assessment I do want to mention that I think brings things together a lot more functionally. It's also, I don't believe it's standardized at all, but it's the Costa writing protocol. Are you familiar with that? 

Jayson Davies   

I've heard of it. I've never used it. 

Cheryl Bregman   

So basically, it looks at writing as writing the task, and it helps you decide which tools are going to best serve the student so and it recognizes that the student might do better with paper and pencil in one scenario and with keyboarding or word prediction in another. And it allows you to sort of do the composition tasks, the dictation tests. But it's very comprehensive. It looks at keyboarding speed versus handwriting speed, and really takes a functional stance on what is going to be the best option in different scenarios for the child. So for example, and I often say to a student, you're fine doing your spelling list in the handwritten form. Anything beyond that, maybe you want to consider keyboarding the activity, or you can do four to five sentences beyond that, you want to start looking at the keyboard as an option. So I think it offers, offers that kind of thinking process. 

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, and that's something that we as OTS should be doing in general, right? Like, if a kid's just going to write their name, it makes no sense to bust out a computer, open up Word Processor, write your name, press the Print button. But if you're going to do a longer paragraph or essay, then maybe it becomes more worth the effort to get out the computer or whatnot. So go. Great. I love that. Thanks for sharing.  

Cheryl Bregman   

And also, yeah, and the child again, needs to become like, especially by second or third grade, when when the writing load becomes a lot more, they have to start self advocating, because oftentimes teacher isn't familiar with word prediction or with speech to text, and the child needs to take more of a role in advocating for themselves. 

Jayson Davies   

I mean, let's be fair, a second grader knows more about an iPhone and iPad in a Chromebook than any teacher does. So exactly makes sense. Alrighty, great. Well, you know what I want? I want to, I think transition to our last topic for the day, which is your handwriting Heroes program. And I think a great way to actually make this transition is talking a little bit about how you got to where you were. Because if I remember right, your handwriting Heroes program started out as an app, and we were just talking about some digital stuff, and you've, kind of have transitioned away from an app and if you have a computer system now, right? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Well, I think, yeah, that's essentially just a matter of where technology has gone. There's been a shift from iPads to Chromebooks, not specifically 

Jayson Davies   

when it comes to schools, right? They're using Chromebooks. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Exactly. So that was just from a in terms of what I did learn through this whole process of becoming a, you know, a designer and a developer. Not that I do any of the coding myself. I'm just the idea person behind it, but that these things change. So it's not as though you can create something and just let it go. It needs constant nurture and constant updates. And it was basically out of necessity, because of that, you know, major switch from iPads to Chromebooks within the school system that I had to go web based, and so it wasn't, and I'm currently, hopefully soon, relaunching the app version as well. Awesome. So so that, because I, you know, I really like the tactile nature of the iPad. I enjoyed more than the Chromebook screen interface. But essentially, the content has remained the same. And I, you know, and the methodology, obviously, has remained the same throughout.  

Jayson Davies   

Gotcha. Great. So then, why don't you share with us a little bit about handwriting Heroes program, just kind of an overarching for someone who's never heard of it. How do you like to share about it? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Sure, well, it's a multi sensory handwriting program. It's used you know, in individually or in classrooms. And as you might guess, it starts with lowercase letter formations and and then we practice lowercase for it's taught in five weeks, there's five little groups, and it's taught in five weeks, which gives the child the opportunity to start writing right right when they finished that five week program. But also has then approximately 10 weeks of a print practice where we do activities like that alphabet, the you know, the alphabet, speed activities, and working on words and short phrases. And then lastly, I teach uppercase over a period of six weeks. So the program takes about 21 weeks, and it can be modified for, you know, and differentiated but, but primarily, I like to get that five week done as quickly as possible, to give them, to give the kids the tools that they need.  

Jayson Davies   

Yeah, absolutely. And so is this geared more toward OTs, more toward teachers, parents, all the above. What would you say? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Well, all the above, I really, you know, do feel like teachers need to reclaim the responsibility for handwriting, and one of the benefits of the program is that it is something that can be taught as a whole group in a classroom. So there are strategies that lend a two whole group teaching and, you know, whether it be the videos, where the videos can be shown to the whole group, or air writing, where a classroom teacher can observe all the children, airwriting at one time and then at the same time. It works nicely in a home environment, one on one, or a home school. And. Environment where the child can just navigate their way through the game independently.  

Jayson Davies   

Gotcha, okay, cool. And, I mean, I took a look at it. I did the free trial, and I saw, like, some of the videos that you've got going on, some of the games you got you use the sky, the clouds, the grass and the dirt analogy that I know some people, some people use. And so I guess my question is, you said it's multi sensory. Just explain a little bit about all the different ways that you made this multi sensory. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Sure. So basically, I've embedded multi sensory strategies throughout the program. So for audit auditory learners, each group has a theme song that emphasizes the common stroke, and each letter, as I mentioned, has a story that explains why the letters are formed the way they are. The students can retell the story as they form the letter to help them order the strokes. So for example, K sky dives down, a little bird kisses K and flies away. And if you saw that in your mind's eye, you would understand the stroke sequence. And so it provides a rationale for why the strokes occur in that in that sequence. Then for visual learners, the images and the videos, especially the slapstick moments of very engaging for kids and then for kind of static learners, lots of finger tracing and air writing to stimulate the multi memory parts to make learning the letters very efficient. I'll also say in terms of the kinesthetic learners, there's five letter groups. So just like you know, other programs have used letter groupings, we've got it done in story format. The skydivers, LT, K, I, J, they all skydiving down. The bouncers are H, b, r, N, MP, and they drop down, bounce back up and over. The cannon pops are the ones that start like C and so on. And I think I should also, you know, make note that a differentiator is that I have all those letters practiced at once. So the emphasis is on learning the common stroke, but also understanding the differences within the groups. And it makes, essentially, instead of writing, taking five letters and writing focusing on one letter each day of the week, we're going to focus on the entire group for the whole week. So the kids write LT, K, ij, and the oftentimes people will say, Well, you can't, like, introduce five letters at once. The you know this Charles in kindergarten. And I'm like, it's never not worked. It's just never not worked. It doesn't matter who the child is, what their disability is. I might alter the the output mechanism that they're using. So I might, you know, have them do it in sand or foam or, you know, something that's more appealing than a pencil and paper, but they can learn that L, Sky dives down, he lands on a lemon. T, Sky dives down a two can, tosses a tomato, and they see the stories. It's like watching a Short Cartoon for them, and they're practicing that core group every day of the week, then the next group gets introduced in the following week, and you still review those initial five, which takes all of you know, 10 seconds to write at that point. 

Jayson Davies   

Awesome. That's great. So you've got it chunked into smaller groups, but rather than doing one a day, we recommend kind of working on all of them together so that they can kind of see the difference says between them in real time. Really, 

Cheryl Bregman   

right, right? And it's, it's just something that you know has proven to be manageable for the children and and very effective. It's also builds that like motor memory without being repetitious. So I find that if you have a child doing R 10 times, there's no real point in that. They get sort of, you know, the brain sort of blocks it out eventually, and they're just sort of being repetitive without, you know, being active learners. 

Jayson Davies   

Awesome, awesome. And so handwriting heroes.org. That's the website. If someone goes over there with, what can they expect to find without even having to pay a single dollar? What do you have over there? 

Cheryl Bregman   

 So they can sign up for a free we. Long trial as you did, and with that, you'll be able to basically execute the first full week of the program, being the skydivers. And just to get a sense of that, the workbook is available for, for the practice pages, and all the videos are available for for the skydiving letters, so you'll be able to just get a real feel for the program and get a sense of whether your child or your class enjoys us. 

Jayson Davies   

I love it, yeah. And I mean, I'm even on the page right now, even before you sign up for a free trial, there's a lot of different ideas that you can draw from it, just by looking at many of the pictures and animations you have on the website before you even sign up for a free trial, something like the finger puppets that I'm looking at right now, right? Making a little finger puppet to trace the letters. That's a great idea, just in itself, right? 

Cheryl Bregman   

And the kids love that. It's something that's used in the pre K classrooms and in the kindergarten classrooms, where it just animates the process and it makes a writing real fun so so they can take that to you, essentially a different level. 

Jayson Davies   

Absolutely well for everyone out there listening and you want to check out handwriting heroes. It is@handwritingheroes.org Cheryl, thank you so much for coming on today. Really appreciate it. Is there any last words that you would like to share with any ot listening today? 

Cheryl Bregman   

Just to work with your your classroom teachers and to enjoy the process of being, you know, of being involved in this process of handwriting and to look more carefully at the at the students and and what their needs are, not to you know, just confine it to whether or not something is legible. Look beyond that so, you know, so that you can help that child. Functionally. 

Jayson Davies   

Great. Well. Thank you so much for all the wonderful tips. I really do think that some people are going to leave today just having so much more in their ot you know that that tool chest, or whatever you want to call it, right in their ot toolbox today. So thank you so much. Really appreciate you being here, and I look forward to staying in touch. 

Cheryl Bregman   

Thanks Jayson. 

Jayson Davies   

Thank you so much for sticking around all the way to the end of the episode, I really hope that the conversation between myself and Cheryl really helped you to reevaluate a little bit about what you know about handwriting. It was really eye opening to me, especially when we talked about the starting with lowercase versus uppercase letters, because I do see that right. We see kids that get fixated on using uppercase letters, and we're trying to teach them those lowercase letters, and it's just not happening. So if we know that a student might have difficulty with generalizing or maybe learning multiple variations on a single item, then maybe we should be starting with the lowercase letters first and introducing uppercase letters as needed. Anyways. I hope this episode really helped you to maybe rethink, or at least question some of the things that you know about handwriting, the instruction that you do with the students and what you teach to the teachers with that enjoy the rest of your day, the rest of your week, and I will see you next time on the otschoolhouse podcast, take care. Bye, bye. 

Amazing Narrator   

Thank you for listening to the otschoolhouse podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse com Until next time class is dismissed. 

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