OTS 167: Win Over Teachers & Kids with Proven, Fun Strategies to Improve Writing!
- Jayson Davies
- Jan 27
- 41 min read
Updated: May 5
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 167 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
What do you think makes handwriting fun and effective for kids? In this episode, we dig into strategies that don’t just teach handwriting but make it enjoyable for students.
Dr. Beverly Moskowitz, the Size Matters Handwriting Program creator, shares her 48 years of expertise to show you how to empower teachers, build student buy-in, and integrate handwriting practices across the curriculum.
From understanding key concepts like "Super C" letters to using engaging tools like stars, dice, and even spaghetti and meatballs for spacing, this episode is packed with practical, research-based tips.
So, grab a notebook and join us as we explore the art of handwriting in a way that's as impactful as it is entertaining!
Listen now to learn the following objectives:
Learners will identify at least two handwriting strategies that could be embedded in all content areas across the curriculum.
Learners will identify at least two handwriting strategies you can use to increase student buy-in and teacher retention in the classroom.
Learners will understand the benefits of structured and Adapted Material
Guests Bio
Beverly H. Moskowitz, DOT, MS OTR/L FAOTA, has over 48 years of experience as a pediatric Occupational Therapist, making significant contributions to the field. She holds a BS in OT from the University of Pennsylvania and both an MS and DOT from Temple University. Dr. Bev is the author of the Size Matters ® Handwriting Program, proven effective in promoting legibility and widely used across the U.S. and internationally.
In 2010, she founded Real OT Solutions ®, which provides effective, affordable solutions for therapists and educators. She was inducted as a Fellow into the American Occupational Therapy Association in 2015. Additionally, Dr. Bev is a national lecturer and offers professional development workshops to teach best practices and time-saving strategies for therapists. Her commitment to mentoring and research continues to influence the field of occupational therapy.
Quotes
“You have to have concepts and strategies that happen all day long in all content areas because writing does happen in social studies, science. In math, the kids are writing. So you wanna remind kids about the best practices in handwriting so their writing is legible there too”
-Beverly H. Moskowitz, DOT MS OTR/L FAOTA
“Our job is not to give teachers more to do. They have plenty. But we wanna give them strategies that they can embed handwriting across the curriculum, make it easier for them to do so, build that buy in with the kids so that there's follow through.”
-Beverly H. Moskowitz, DOT MS OTR/L FAOTA
“Kids love feeling like teachers, and they love catching you when you mess up. When you intentionally mess up and let them critique you, it builds their confidence and ownership over their learning.”
-Beverly H. Moskowitz, DOT MS OTR/L FAOTA
Resources
Episode Transcript
Expand to view the full episode transcript.
Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse 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
Hey there. And welcome to Episode 167 of the OT school house podcast, as school based ot practitioners, we know that telling or even politely asking kids to quote, unquote, write neatly is never enough to fix their messy handwriting. Instead, to support handwriting development, we need an established plan effective collaboration with teachers, and, of course, the means to help our students build habits over time. Luckily for us, today, we are joined by an OT who has put in a ton of hard work to help make this easier for us by developing a roadmap for achieving such a goal. In today's episode, I'm sharing a sneak peek from one of over 30 professional development courses inside the OT schoolhouse collaborative, our professional development and resource hub for school based ot practitioners. You're about to hear one of my favorite ot practitioners, Dr Beverly Moskowitz, as she shares what works and what doesn't work when it comes to supporting student handwriting skills in her course win over teachers and kids with proven and fun strategies to improve writing. What you're about to hear now is the audio version of Dr Moskowitz course, and you can watch the video version using the link in the description below. However, if you would like access to the full a OTA approved version of this course, complete with access to the slides, resources and yes, a certificate of completion for your continuing education needs, you can do that by becoming a member of the OT school house collaborative in addition to accessing professional development courses, ot schoolhouse collaborative members also have access to exclusive ot school house handouts, our school based ot research library, an interactive IEP goal bank, and my favorite part, our monthly live collaboration hour calls, where You can ask your most pressing school based ot questions without the fear of being judged by parents, teachers, administrators or even other practitioners if you're looking for mentorship and resources related to school based occupational therapy, the OT school house collaborative is your place to be if you haven't joined the OT school house collaborative yet, this is The perfect time to do so join me and hundreds of other new and experienced ot practitioners inside the collaborative at ot schoolhouse.com/collab, also leave a link in the show notes to help you get there. Alright, enough about the collaborative for now. Let me introduce you to Dr Moskowitz, Dr Bev, as she is often referred to as is an experienced pediatric occupational therapist and the creator of the Size Matters handwriting program. Beverly brings over 48 years of experience and is the founder of Real ot solutions, a company dedicated to providing engaging, practical solutions for handwriting improvement. As a long time school based OT, Dr Moskowitz has leaned into our experience as a school based ot as well as the scientific research to develop and publish the handwriting program now used around the world. In this course, Dr Moskowitz will walk us through concrete steps, valuable tools and interactive games to win over both teachers and students, from Star worthy letters to the innovative Alpha triangle. We'll explore a variety of methods designed to make handwriting not just better but also enjoyable for the kids. So without further ado, let me hand the mic over to Dr Moskowitz as she helps you to win over teachers and kids with proven and fun strategies to improve writing.
Beverly Moskowitz
Well, hi everybody. I wish I could see I can I trust that you're there? Thank you so much Jayson for inviting me to be a part of the OT school house collaborative. As Jayson said, I am a seasoned ot doing this for 48 years, and I'm the author of The Size Matters handwriting program. So I'm delighted to share this with you. Aside from the fact that I have created this program, I truly believe it's the future. I'm a very grounded therapist. You have to teach handwriting, but it's not a bad form. Letter size is that variable that will make the biggest difference in the consistency and therefore the readability of the page, and we have the research to prove it Now this, this short one hour course is not going to go over the research. If you want to learn more about that, you can. I'm going to show you where you can find it, on the website, if you want to download it, if you want to learn about it from me personally, I'll share how you can do that too. But right now I'm going to share with you that yes, I am Beverly Moskowitz, and thank you again, Jayson, for inviting me to speak today. So here's our learning objectives for the next hour. At the end of the time, you're going to be able to identify two to three smhp, and that's our shorthand for size matters, handwriting, program concepts and strategies. That can be embedded in all content areas across the curriculum. The research shows it's not about 250 minutes of practice in a workbook a week. Anyway, you have to have concepts and strategies that happen all day long in all content areas, because writing does happen in social studies, science, in math, the kids are writing. So you want to remind kids about the best practices in handwriting so their writing is legible. There too. You're going to be able to identify two to three smhp concepts and strategies to build student buy in and teacher carry over and gosh, I can't emphasize that enough, it's, you know, people that say, I'm not a handwriting therapist, I'm not a handwriting teacher. I gotta say to you guys, first of all, get over it. We are. We are because we're about function in school practice. We're about function participation. And one of the skills that kids have to do in school is to write. And we, more than anybody else, can identify those concepts and strategies that are doable for teachers. Our job is not to give teachers more to do. They have plenty, but we want to give them strategies that they can embed handwriting across the curriculum make it easier for them to do so, build that buy in with the kids, so that there's follow through. So I'm going to give you a few suggestions for both of those. So we're going to start with the key concepts. There's eight of them. In fact, I should share with you. This is a concept driven approach. You can get started tomorrow with your knowledge alone. Now we have materials. They make it easier for you. They make it more consistent. If you're using smhp in a school setting, a classroom setting. But you can certainly get started with your knowledge alone. And you can even make some of this stuff, and I'll share with you how you can do that in your setting. These are the concepts, writing lines, letter lines, Super C, starting points, touch points, letter size, stars and dice, spaghetti and meatballs. After that, we're going to talk about how to build student, buy in, teacher, carry over. So the first concept is that of writing lines. I don't care if it is April, yeah, I don't care what month it is that you introduce, size matters to your school. We always make sure that we're on the same page, literally naming the writing lines. And I'll say to kids after I put these lines on the board, on your smart boards, Promethean boards, whatever you're using. So what do you guys call this line and you'll hear things like the grass line, the ground line, the foot line. There are programs that have a descender line below here. They call that the foot line. This became the knee line. Size matters. Is a very plain and simple program. We call this line the bottom line. So I asked the kids, and with it, be okay if we just call the bottom line the bottom line. I asked them, What do you call this line? And you'll hear things like the hat line, the headline, the skyline. I mean, there's a zillion names for it. And I say to the kids, if it's okay with you guys, could we just call the top line the top line, and I'm cool with this either being the dotted or the middle line. It's important to establish a uniform terminology for the writing lines, because touching the writing lines in all the right places determines whether or not you made your letters the right size. Now, along with that, concept is that of go lines and finish lines. Go lines are green lines down the left side of the page, the paper the desk. Finish lines are checkerboards down the right side of the page, the paper the desk. And we're talking about teaching the alphabet for not for submitted characters who go right to left, but for those of us who write left to right. I prefer a finish line to a red line because it implies dynamic movement. We're moving toward the finish line. So yes, movement toward the go line, it would be considered backward movement. Movement toward the finish line would be considered forward movement. And we talk about that in the directionality of making certain letter lines, the top of seven, the slant in R, the hump in H, those letter lines are made in the direction of the finish line. They're considered forward moving. Letter lines. By contrast, the bottom of G, that little hook, that first diagonal in K, the diagonal in Z, those letter lines are made in the direction of the go line. They're considered backward moving letter lines go. Lines and finish lines are terrific visual references. If you have kids with reversals, if you have kids with dyslexia, dysgraphia, they give, give the kids that directionality, queuing that they need to make their letters properly oriented. You can put go lines and finish lines on desks if you wanted to use highlighter tape for the green line, I caution against using floral tape. Learn that lesson the hard way. It will stain your sleeve. You can buy checkerboards from Amazon. You can make a checkerboard. Get some masking tape and a Sharpie, make a little checkerboard that will help your kids remember the directionality of movement now go lines and finish. Lines are cute for your younger kids, not so cute for your older kids. Know that they eventually morph into your left and right margin lines, but don't expect that anybody knows what they are. Ask the kids, you know, why that line is there, they're going to be like, no, okay, so you want to say to them, that's because all of your writing has to begin next to your go line or your left margin line. And if you have more than three letters to write and you see that right margin line coming up, you're going to go the next line. If you're making a list, you're going to make your numbers to the left or outside your left margin line. Okay, the next concept is that of letter lines, and this year is where we name them. We have standing tall, letter lines, lying down. Letter lines. We have slant ones, they go forward and backward. Clock lines that wrap around an analog clock from 12 to six or six to 12. Sure hope you have some analog clocks in your classrooms, frown lines that go forward and backward. And I would often do this exercise just to entertain myself, because invariably, here's what you see when you ask a child to find, can you find me a letter that has a standing tall line in it? The kids are going to look all over the place like it's going to jump out of thin air. Okay, that's how you know that they never noticed the alphabet strip above the board, the one that's on their desk. Basically, they think that's for filing their nails. Any of the posters that are in the room, it's it's white noise. So you might want to introduce your children to those awesome references your teachers have taken time to hang up during handwriting instruction. Time, you can ask kids to identify different types of letter lines if you have something like that in your school, and we'll talk about if you do or if you don't. Now, Super C is our superhero. He is a letter line, but he's so important, he's given his own status as a key concept. So there are five upper case letters that are super CS, C, G, o, s and Q. There are seven lower case letters that are super CS, A, C, D, G, O, Q, s and he comes packaged with a little extra drama. We always identify what letter size a letter is. And then we say, but not only, and that means that it starts with the C formation. So how are you going to remind kids about what a C formation is, so they don't make that backwards parking back to your go lines and finish lines, and think about, what does superheroes do? Well. They save us, they protect us. So like any superhero, Super C is going to go back to go first, to make sure there's no stragglers, nobody left behind. Gather up all those stragglers before he continues on his way. That's the supersea backstory, but that may be the story, the visual, the kinetic, motion that kids need to live, to remember to always go back, to go before they head forward when they're making Super C letters. The next concept is that of starting points and initial lines. So starting points are indicated by a green dot, a little directional arrow. Initial lines are the lines that emanate from the starting point. So in this little excerpt from the therapist manual, you can see that all the letters start on a line. The initial line for uppercase, A is a backwards slant for uppercase. B, it's a standing tall for Super C, for C, imagine that it's a Super C letter. It starts at the top line. In fact, all letters at the Size Matters hand running program start on a line. Remember I said that? So let's talk about initial lines. Where does what's the initial line for upper case? F? Give you a chance to think about it. Oh, you are correct. It is a standing tall for uppercase V, it's a forward slant. How about Z, it's a forward lying down. G, it's a Super C, okay, now it's going a little bit tricky. How about lowercase F? Where does it start? What's its initial line? It's an exception. It starts below the top line. Its initial line is a backward frown. How about lower case? A, Oh, I hit the button too fast. It starts between the dotted and the bottom line. Its initial line is a forward lying down. Listen, I don't even bring those letters up until I get to it. You got one of those letters in your name? You got to it, but I drill consistency of size. Size matters is not a font. This is a very simple letter creation. Everyone's going to stylize on their own. I don't know if you're writing the same way you learned when you were in kindergarten. I know that I'm not. I learned ball and stick kind of writing everyone's going to stylize. You don't need to teach a stylized font if they eventually decide that they want to put a little monkey tail at the bottom of their tea that's okay, as long as they're touching the bottom line. How about number eight? Where does eight start? And what's its initial line? Well, it starts at the top line and it's a Super C. Number Three starts at the top line and it's its initial line. Is a clock line, lower case r starts at the dotted line. Its initial line is a standing tall. Okay, you can figure this part out. The next concept is that of touch points. And when I say touching, I don't mean getting really close. There cannot be any air between your pencil point and the writing line, and you can't be poking through the line either. Has to be a nice, clean intersection. Now, before we had a pandemic, I used to go up to kids and say, so am I touching you? How about now? Bring my finger closer and closer to the nose. Now I touch my own nose. Am I touching? Am I touching? How about now? Because touching means touching. So we actually count how many times letter lines touch writing lines. C is easy. It touches at the top. It touches at the bottom, two touch points. Now note that their red arrows indicate when letter lines touch writing lines, blue arrows indicate when letter lines touch other letter lines. So bees a little bit trickier you could say. And I hope you can see my cursor, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching, and tell me it has five touches. I would be cool with that, unless your child made that be and their first clock line started down here, you're going to say to those kids, so your clock line has to touch the top line. Now you're going to count that touch point. Or if they start their B and there's a gap they started over here, your clock line has to touch the standing tall line. This is a bit of a gray area. It's most important that you're consistent with yourself that said, if your kids letters are unrecognizable, it may well be because the touch points aren't there. So that's when you want to get fussy about making sure that all of the touch points are accounted for. Okay, but the biggie is the rule for letter size. So you call these letters, over time, tall letters. There's some programs. They call them your giraffe letters. I'm pretty sure that a seventh grader is not going to find that as cute as a kindergartner. We call them size one, size two, size three. That's what we call our different sizes. So the rule for size one letters is this, I like to say it's package is a song and a dance. I'm going to sing and dance for you all right now size one letters, they have to touch the top line, they have to touch the bottom line. They can't go higher. They can't go lower. They can't float in the middle. My friends, I did not tell you that. It was a great song and dance. And dance as a sound bite. You're going to say a zillion times a day. And touching means touching. So make your writing lines on the board. Make a pink rectangle. That's our color for size one. Make it exactly. Touch the top and bottom line. Teach the kids the rule, and then I make a perfect letter. I point out all the touches, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching. If you make a letter like that, I'm going to give you a store. I wonder if I can do that again. Do you think I can? I can't. I make every single one at a time. Errant looking a I've ever seen the kids make, and one at a time, I asked the kids to critique me. Is it star worthy? They go, No, you say, why not? I'll say, well, it's too tall. It's too long. This one is floating. This one's not touching over here. This is not touching on the on the dotted line. Finally, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching. That's how you earn a star. All your uppercase letters are size one, and I don't care if you come to me in ninth grade and know that the research shows that you can still make improvements in handwriting through ninth grade. And that said I had a colleague share with me before and after results of a client who had a stroke, the change was remarkable after a few sessions, and that client was 92 so I don't know. I think you can make changes in handwriting way beyond ninth grade, but I don't care what grade you you start always go back to the upper case alphabet, because the rule is the same for every single one, they have to touch the top line. They have to touch the bottom line. They can't go higher. They can't go lower. They can't float in the middle. Now, after you do your upper case letters, your size one upper case letters write words that are commonly found in upper case letters, and a good source for that, or signs. Look for signs in and around your building. It may say, It probably says, exit in all capitals. Principals office may be in all capitals cafeteria. Look for signs in and around your neighborhood. Your school name may be above the front door on the lawn. Use words that the kids will recognize they practice writing them in all uppercase letters, making each of those letters star worthy. After you do that, you move on to your size one lower case letters. There are only seven of these. I do not teach B and D at the same time. I teach B as part of the BLT and as before, make the lines on the board, make your pink rectangle. Review the rule, make that perfect letter point at all the touches. Then you say, you think I can do that again. Okay, the kids are starting to get wise to you, because now you can't, yeah, listen, if there was more screen here, I can make 20 more errant looking ds. And now you ask the kids, so how do I do? And the kids go, terrible. You say, Why? It's too tall. This is too high. This is too low. This is floating. This is not touching. It's not touching here, finally, touching in all the right places, touching, touching, touching, touching. Way to earn a star. But not only, and this is where, in United chorus, the kids should, should yell out. It's also a Super C, meaning it starts with a C formation after your size. One lower case, you're moving on to your size too. And here's the rule, they have to touch the dotted line. They have to touch the bottom line. They can't go higher. They can't go lower. They can't float in the middle. Gosh, I hope you weren't expecting more. It's a sound bite. You're going to say a zillion times a day. Now there are 14 size two letters. I do not consider the.in lowercase. I part of the body. It's the standing tall part that has to touch the dotted line in the bottom line. Yellow is our color for size two. Make your lines on the board. Scan some adapted writing paper onto your smart boards. Yellow square indicates a size two letter, and then you're going to make a perfect one, pointing out how it touching in all the right places. And then the question, do you think I could do that again? And the kids go, No, you're terrible at this, and you are, and you're intentionally making every single a you there, they all look like A's, right? Every single one of them looks like an a and I would venture a guess that if you looked at your children's printing letter by letter, you could figure out what they were. It's in the context of the whole but it's a mess. That's how you know it's not about form. It has to be the consistency of size. So let the kids critique you. Finally, you're going to make one that's touching in all the right places. Way to earn a star. But not only, and I hope that you're all saying it's also a Super C. Okay, here's the rule for size three letters need to be sitting down. Size three letters have to touch the dotted line, have to go below the bottom line. Can't go higher, must go lower. And if it has a belly, it has to be sitting on the bottom line. Okay, I don't know if you were looking at the screen when I was doing this, but I was doing my little dance with my hands. Here, there are five size three letters. Oh, I don't know why they're not populating G, j, p, q and Y. It'll probably populate the end of the slide. Blue is our color for size three. Make your rectangle so it starts at the dotted line and goes below the bottom line. Make a perfect G, pointing out all the touches, touching, touching, touching, going below. And then, do you think I could make another one. Then go nope, and Oh, there they are. There's the five size three letters. The only one without a belly is is j. And now you're going to make everything you've ever seen the kids do. Okay. Again, they all look like G's. But are they star worthy? Let the kids critique you. You know, when you teach the kids the rules, it's as if you gave them the answers to the test. Now the kids can score you. They can score themselves. And best practice, research shows that when kids have the ability to self monitor, you build the buy in. You are giving the ability to self monitor to them by teaching them the rules they can score each other. Oh, now you can build pure mentors, finally touching in all the right places. Way to earn a star. But not only it's also a Super C, okay, the next concept, well, you've heard me talk about way to earn a star. The next concept is stars and dice. Stars and dice both a concept and a strategy, and that's going to lead to the kids feeling empowered teachers being able to carry over these concepts throughout the school day and being able to embed it across the curriculum. So I've used the word star worthy. Letter lines have to touch the writing lines in all the right places. At this point, we are scoring for size only. And in fact, this is a research study that I'm looking to launch anybody in a doctoral program, contemplating a doctoral program, looking for a research study, please reach out to me a whole bunch. We already have more research than any other program out there, and we're not done so there's several studies in development. We have six published studies already, but I am already in talks with several universities for more studies, and this is one of them. You know, all of the hand running assessments out there. The ths, the test of handwriting skills, is the only standardized one. The rest are normal criterion referenced, relatively easy test to administer. It's a horrible test to score. You can be sitting there for 50 minutes trying to score it. The other ones aren't, aren't much better. My contention is it really it's about size. Stop with your millimeter ruler. Who cares if once you score for size, you get enough information that you can then have that child redo that same baseline writing sample, their name, upper and lower case, alphabet, a grade level sentence. Score it for size. After a period of intervention, you will see a market difference, and it will take you seconds to score clinical utility. That's important. So at this point, we're only scoring for size. Let's prove that, let's, let's do a study and prove that we have a valid outcome measure using just size. So for instance, suppose a child wrote three letters, aaa, ABC, dog, and all of those letters were the right size. They got a score of three out of three. That's a perfect score. However, if their letters are not the right size, or maybe they made them the right size, but they made them the wrong way. So maybe instead of using two slant lines, and I'm hoping you're looking at me in the screen, if they instead of using two slant lines for an upper case A, they're using one standing tall, one slant line for an upper case A, you're gonna play the dice game see if you can straighten it out. Suppose they started their letters at the bottom, instead of starting them at at the top, the top odd line or the dotted line, they're going to play the dice game to work on, starting from the right place. And that said, my friends, oh, it's time to play the dice game. The dice game determines practice whatever the kids roll is, how many times they have to make a star worthy letter? If they roll a five, they have to make five star worthy letters. If they make five letters and only two are star worthy, they're still making you that letter. They're going to look at you cross side, really. And I often say to them, Do I look like I'm kidding? No, you have to make star worthy letters. And if they roll a one, imagine that they only have to make you one. So suppose they wrote the word Monday, and it looked kind of like this. I'm going to give a star to OT. Overall, these letters are the right size. So there were six. There's two stars if you need a percentage, there you go. I'm going to underline M, N, A and Y. Those letters are not the right size. They are not touching the writing lines in all the right places. I'm going to play the dice game with each of those letters. Also going to underline D, while overall it's the right size. You'll notice there's a gap between the Super C part and the standing tall, and I'm scoring for size so they get a star. But now when I play the dice game, I want to fine tune it. I want to close that gap. I want to make sure that all parts of this M are touching the writing lines, same thing with the Y. And that said, my friends, if your children, especially if they are in higher grades, higher grades could be second, third grade on up, if they continue to make that upper case a, okay, look at me if they continue to make that upper case a with a standing tall line and a slam line, but it's the right size, I'm gonna tell you to move on. They just created their own font. And it's not about letter lines anyway, we teach them, but at a certain point in time, you need to move on, because it really is not the most important thing. It's the consistency of size. Suppose the only way they don't reverse upper case N is by starting at the bottom, going up forward, slant up on teaching starting at the bottom, because it's not about starting points either. So this is a very grounded approach here. We really don't it is the consistency of size. We are not that concerned with letter lines. We teach them, but we have to be grounded, practical realists. It's consistency of size. And if you think about a cursive starts at the bottom. A lot of submitted characters start at the bottom. We're hung up on starting at the top. That's not the most important thing. Okay, after that, we teach spacing, and we call that spaghetti and meatballs. That's our concept for teaching spacing. I strongly suggest that you not get hung up on space until you get 80% accuracy and size and you will. And then we talk about inside space, in between letters, a little spaghetti. Outside space, a big, fat meatball. So at this point in time, I walk around with colored pencils. If it's a young child, I'm going to leave that point dull. If it's an older child, I'll go to sharpen that pencil. I use yellow for my spaghetti. And if there's still room, I'm still making spaghetti. Now I count all my potential spaghetti spaces, FYI. If you have a six letter word, you have five potential spaghetti spaces. If you have a three letter word, you have two potential spaghetti spaces. So you can count up all the letters in your words. You know as it was, all the spaces between your in your words. Count how many of those issued single stars and there's your data that's pretty easy. Meatball spaces go outside of your words. So now I take my red colored pencil and I draw a little meatball in between all my words. If they didn't crowd the right margin, give them a free meatball. If they properly aligned down the left margin, give them a free meatball. But make all your meatballs the same size so they the kids can see, well, this one was overlapping star, those places where there was room for only one meatball, not a meat loaf. And there's your data. Kids love this concept, and that said they cannot score themselves for spaghetti and meatballs unless they swap out their pencil for yellow and red ones, because then it's unreadable all over again. Now it's all lined up, and you can't figure out what they wrote, so make sure that they have that handy when you're ready to score for that. Any questions on the concept so far? Or you know what? We can leave the write your questions down in the chat box. Let's catch up with them at the end of the presentation. If that's okay, that is perfect. Bev, go ahead, yeah. Okay. So let's talk about pushing into classrooms contextual collaboration, working within the context of whatever subject the teachers are covering. So suppose there is a handwriting instructional time good for you. So you can ask the teachers, can I come to your classroom? Oh, we already have a handwriting curriculum. Size matters. Can play in the sandbox with with any handwriting program. In fact, if your schools are embracing the science of reading curriculum. We are the science of handwriting. So there is a way to work together with those people or any other handwriting curriculum. No worries. Just ask them what the letter of the day is. We're going to come in and maybe do a lesson. On letter lines. So we can use the similar language. Can you find any letters with different types of letter lines? And then whatever the letter of the day is, make a perfect one. Now you're going to teach the kids the rules. I'm sorry. I should have said that. Teach the kids the rules, make that perfect letter, pointing out all the touches. And then, well, you know where this is going, you're going to make a series of really bad ones, because they all look like G's let the kids critique you. They love this part. Little kids love feeling like teachers, and they love catching you when you mess up. You are intentionally messing up. They're so empowered by that that the kids tell you why. It's not stir worthy. You're going to look crestfallen during language arts, walk around with dice. For all those teachers that may say to you, may or may not, say to you, I listen. I believe in handwriting. I don't. I don't have any time in the day. Can you walk around with dice is what you're going to say to them, because when they're walking around, they can stop by somebody's desk, point to a letter or or a word, something that you've covered already, the letters that you've covered, if all the letters in the word have are ones that you've covered the whole word. And then ask the kids to have to do, is it star worthy? And now the kids are going to go, Uh, no. You say, Well, why not? What? What size is upper case, a and, and what's the rule? So you're now, you're singing and dancing with the kids. Suggest they pick out a die that's calling their name. Listen, my dice game has 24 die in it. They're four sided. They're six, 810, 1220, fasted to die. I say to the kids, if you irritate me, I'm going to give that to you on purpose. You're going to be there all day. Uh, they're sparkled. They're iridescent, marbleized. Some of them have the pips, a little dots, some have numbers, some have sign language. They're adorable. And if you have any dice in your classrooms, they're just as cute. So go scrambling through your board games that you're not playing anymore. Get those dice together. The kids roll the die and at the bottom of the page, the back of the page, or another piece of paper entirely. You can sneak in some practice. Now, listen, if you stop one child, you better believe the child next to him, behind him, across the room, saw that interaction, and they're thinking letter size, because they know they could be next during any subject. I'll use the magnetic rectum square board. So this is a wipe off board, and in truth, is not magnetic. I have to always tell everybody it's Ferris back. It means it has iron chips so that magnets stick to it. But we have a lot of itinerants, teachers, therapists, maybe amongst you out there, you too that go from class to class or school to school. So in order to make it lightweight, it's Ferris back comes in a tube, so you can carry it, you can staple it to a a bulletin board, thumb tack it. It works best if you back it up to a magnet board. It comes with little white thumb tacky magnets, and then you use the pink, yellow, blue. It has 25 magnets to, you know, right to cover up a word right on the board. Cover with the magnets. Right on the magnets, they're all wipe off surfaces. It's a great way to introduce new concepts, vocabulary that's integral to a lesser we got a unit here on on weather for all grades. And I apologize. I realized that I did not put this slide into the handout. So if you want to take a screenshot, I'll wait a minute until I populate the whole screen, or you can just take notes here. But for all grades, a dish issue adapted writing paper at different grade levels. So in pre K, the distance from the top to bottom line the ruling should be an inch and a half. Skip space refers to the space between a set of writing lines that should be an inch. In kindergarten, the distance from top to bottom line is an inch. The skip space should be five eighths of an inch. First grade, three quarters of an inch with a one half inch skip space. Second grade, half an inch from top to bottom with a 3/8 inch skip space. Third grade, adapted paper. First of all, it's the same ruling as regular ruled paper. What makes it adapted is that it has a well, our paper has a thicker bottom line. Stopping is harder than starting. We give kids an extra chance to get it right, and it continues to have that dotted middle line. So that really helps distinguish the sets of writing lines. And here's how beautifully this all works with size matters. So suppose Jason is in Jason, you're in first grade, and you're doing an amazing job with those size one letters, their size two letters, size three letters. I'm doing my happy dance, Jayson, I believe that you are ready for second grade paper. How do you feel? I. He feels fantastic. I don't know where he
Jayson Davies
is. He's dancing. Oh, he's
Beverly Moskowitz
dancing. Is the right is the right response? Okay. Again, every little kid likes to feel like a big kid. I've graduated Jason up and sitting next to him is Abdel. He says, Well, how about me? And I say, you are so close, good buddy, what are we thinking about those size two letters? What's the rule now, once again, we're singing and dancing. I'm going to come back in a couple weeks. I I believe that second grade papers in your future. This is a huge motivator. The kids want to graduate up, and a lovely thing that you can do for your teachers is to give them reams of two sided first, second, third grade paper so they have it available during any subject. Here's a great way to build that connection with your teacher all. Imagine this. The kids walk in in the morning, they hang up their coat, their book back and their cubby, they grab a worksheet, and they have to solve the puzzle. So looking at these O, W words down here, which one is the first one, I know you're saying to yourself, that's plow, and the second one No, and the third one snowy, the fourth one grown. Show how listen. It's a combination of the number of letters and letter size. The kids solve the puzzle, then they have to write the words. And for anybody who's been confronted by a teacher when you showed up their classroom, who has said to you, who are you taking? I don't think anybody I want to come in? Okay, this is a way to win over those teachers. Create a worksheet because they're going to go, actually, that was pretty cool. You just supported curriculum so they can write their letters. Eventually, this could be a job given to kids that they they create these worksheets for their classmates. Uh, you can play games like Simon says, Be a letter line so everybody knows how Simon Says works. So imagine this. You want to have go lines and finish lines. The kids are all facing the front of the room. Here's your board right here. Maybe you make posters, get some foam core. Make a big green stripe, put it on the left side. That's your goal line. You have a checkerboard. Put it on the right side, that's your finish line. If you don't have a setup like that, maybe you get some easels and you make your go lines and finish lines. You project. You know how you make each other do each of the different letter lines. For instance, when Simon says, Be a standing toe line, you have to stand or sit. If they're sitting really straight, like a statue. Simon says, Be a lying down line. You're going to place your head on the desk, or for feeling really playful, you can lie down across your desk, on the floor, on the on the window sill. Simon says, Be a slant line. Now Simon is going to either to ask you to be a forward or a backwards slant. If you're a forward slant, you're going to lean toward the finish line. If you're a backwards then you're going to lean toward the go line. And remember, you know how Simon works. He says, Simon says, Be a forward slant. Simon says, Be a backwards land. Simon says, Be a forward stand. They they look like cuckoo birds. Okay. And then you finally say, um, be a forward slant. Okay. Now everyone starts to move them, but Simon didn't say they're out. Simon says, Be a Super C. Now this is a little bit more challenging. You always have to face the finish line. That's the direction you're going, put your hands up in the air and bend over so that your butt is pointing toward the go line. You like to pair that you're going to want to pair that with. Simon says, Be a clock line. So you're going to continue facing the finish line, hands up in the air, and now you're going to bend backwards so your belly is toward the finish line. Simon says, Be a supersede. Be a be it. Simon says, Be a clock line. Because, okay, the kids are going back and forth and they're all giggling and and that's just a fun way to reinforce letter lines. Simon says, Be a smile. Simon says, Be a frown, be a smile. Oh, you missed it. Okay, that's a fun game to play. Moving back to how else you can bring these concepts into your classroom? Volunteer to be a center. I was in a school that didn't believe in handwriting practice, handwriting instruction in kindergarten, I'm like, really love you center. So I became a handwriting center. It's very popular center. Everyone want to the truth is, kids want to learn the rules. They want to please you. So that enabled me to model language strategies that the teachers could use. And centers are a great time to play with the different concepts. So I'll go over a few of these. Center time games, dissect and tally. You want to find letters with each type of letter line. Maybe you want to find letters in different count up all the different letter lines in a student's name. How many of each type of letter line i. Play directional games where you reinforce that positional movement. Moving toward the goal line is backward, moving toward the finish line is forward. Get sentence strips from your their school, issue ones, I'm I'm pretty sure that your school has them. And then open up your literacy, social studies, science books, and then, using pink, yellow, blue markers, crayons, colored pencils, the kids are going to graph a phrase, a sentence, a word, and then trade it with their neighbor, make it something that's that's meaningful, language, that's meaningful to solve the puzzle and then write the sentence again, both creation of the puzzle and then solving your neighbor's puzzle can be a fun center game. Use the magnetic director, square board. We call it the MRB because that's such a mouthful. Use the the MRB to graph kids, names, high frequency words, word wall, words, play snowman. So what is snowman? Let's go look familiar. So you use the MRB, and you cover up, you write the words, and then you cover them up. And as the kids guess a letter, or they guess a wrong letter, you draw more and more parts of the snowman. If they get it right, you can write on the magnet, or remove the magnet if they get it wrong. Well, you know where this is going. The idea is to solve the puzzle before the sun comes out, because that will melt your snowmen. Play ransom notes. Or this game requires a little bit of prep. You want to gather some samples of writing from children, and you're going to cut them into individual letters. So looking at the, you know, the old time ransom notes, where they cut and paste in, okay, that's what we're going for here. Okay, so looking at the word yarn, what would the score be? Now, your denominator, there's always going to be fraction. Your denominator is already, always the number of letters. There's only one star. Here's your score. Looking at the word string as it's written, what would the score be? Well, how many of these letters are in stars? Now that n is not beautiful, but I'm scoring for size. I will play the dice game on end to try and make sure they trace that what's going to be a forward frown better. But there's the score, three out of six. Wooly, oh, that came with the answer. Okay, two out of five. Okay, there's plenty of games where that came from. Letter, line equations. Oh, this is a pre download from my website if you want to, if you want to print out the letter line equation card. But imagine if you had a standing tone, three lying down lines. What letter would you be making? Oh, you guys are so smart, and you didn't even have to say it out loud. Okay, the upper Casey, uh, letter blocks. Now, some of these centers we actually do during my live courses, so we we create this material, but you can make this in your in your schools, as is get those sentence strips your school issued ones are often an inch and a half from top to bottom line. The ones that you get from Staples, or like, an inch from top to bottom line. So, so whatever your your sentence strip is, you're going to use that measurement to make your size one, two or three blocks. You can take a sheet of construction paper if you want, or, even better, get those phone sheets, because they're more durable. They're not going to rip so quickly. And then you're going to make top and bottom lines thusly. So, if you're a pre K student, make the distance from the top to the bottom line four inches. The distance from the dotted line to the bottom line two inches. Kindergarten top to bottom line will be two inches. Dotted Line to bottom line. This, this, this is, yeah, this is if you're going to be making those the pink, yellow and blue squares and rectangles. If it's an inch, the distance can be a inch and a half top to bottom, or three quarters of an inch. If you're in second grade, you can make smaller ones an inch from top to bottom, and then get your pink, yellow and blue construction paper. Or better still, if you can get foam sheets, and these are the dimensions that you're going to be making. Your pink rectangles are going to be four inches by two inches. So you're going to, you know, make lines. The kids can help make this. Use your the Alpha triangle. I don't know if you know, if I should show that to you. This is the alpha triangle. I'm holding it up, so look, look at me. Okay, this will help you to measure it. And when the kids are drawing lines, they can put their hand above it and not get their fingers in their way. Help cut them out. Alpha triangle there that can help you to measure it. And then you can store these. Create a little envelope if you want, or just use an envelope to store all your shapes in it. And then, when, before any kind of writing activity, if there's language vocabulary, the kids would pull out their, let me just go back and show this. They'd pull out their white foam sheet. They'd pull out their pink, yellow and blue their envelope with their pink, yellow and blue squares and rectangles, and they would graph it on the phone sheet or the sentence strip. And if your principal is on board with this, perhaps you could encourage them to identify a wall outside of their office as the wall of fame. Once kids have mastered letter size, they get to write their name on a sentence strip, hang it up on the wall. It's a real status symbol. You know, everybody likes to have their name on, you know, in lights. That's kind of what you're doing. You're giving them the opportunity to also have their name in lights. Let's talk about copying. Okay, so that was some ways to build the buy in. Let's talk about build how to promote copying, because it's another issue that we often get referrals for. Kids are missing their bus because they weren't done copying the homework, or they copied something down, but there were so many errors. You couldn't read it. They couldn't even read it. They know. They didn't know what they're what the assignment was. So knowing when you're teaching copying, this is the smhp approach to copying. There's a visual, auditory and oral component to it, and here's the strategy. So first the visual part, direct line copy. That means that the prompt, whatever is they're copying, is on the paper right above the lines they're going to be writing on. So everything's within the same visual field. They basically don't have to move their eyes. That's followed by a near point prompt, which is at the end of the desk. And I'm amazed how many times I'd go into a classroom and the kids kindergarten first, they're expected to copy something against to the far end of the desk, and you're asking for a gaze shift, or the prompt is off to the side, and now you're doing a lateral gaze shift, where the medial, lateral muscles of the eyes are expected to the excursion is different lengths. Okay, start with direct line near point at midline. It's now at the center of the back of the desk, or a little bit further away, even further, and then now it's at the board. So that's the sequence of copying distance that goes into this rubric distractions refers to what else is on the prompt. If you wrote on the chart, is just copying a single sentence from a problem. Might not be anything else on the paper, but maybe they're copying out of a book, and now there's a graphic or some other things that they have to copy now they gotta pretend they don't see it there. Maybe there's a lot of that kind of distractions. Maybe there's something that's written there, but it's a whole different context. It's not related to what they're writing, or maybe they are copying a sentence out of a paragraph, in which case the prompt is embedded in terms of visual cues. Is the prompt on the same kind of paper that kids are going to be writing? The writing on first grade adapted paper. The prompt is on first grade adapted paper. Maybe they also have a near point, a sample of what letters look like. Maybe they have an alpha triangle nearby, or you have a desktop alphabet strip that they've been referencing and they haven't destroyed at this point in the year. I just the same type of paper, but there's, you know, it says the same type of paper. Maybe the prompt is on third grade paper and they're writing on first grade paper, or vice versa, and there's a near point Q. Maybe it's the same type of paper, but there's no near point Q, no point, no reference. Maybe the teacher just wrote on the board and there's no lines at all, but you're giving them an alpha triangle, maybe they're writing on the board and they have nothing to reference. So maybe there's that. And then the other thing to reference when it comes to understanding copying is chunking. So chunking is language that teachers use when they are promoting fluency in reading after they teach kids how to identify individual sounds at a time, they teach them to blend those sounds, consonant blends, or consonant, vowel, consonant. Now we got phonemes, so that helps them to be faster and more accurate. And know that this is part of the written language production standards. If you don't know about that. You don't know about it yet because it's brilliant, and not in this short course right here, but you can download it from my website and learn about it. So chunking, it's divided into the number of letters that you copy at a time before you have to look back up to the prompt, or the number of words you have to copy before you look up to the prompt. And. 10 now, if the word is chunking, for instance, I see a C, I write a C, I see an H, I write it an H, I see a that's not very fast. I'm copying one letter at a time. But if I can see groups of letters, C, H, U, and then I write C, H, U, and then I look back up and I go, N, K, I'm doing three letters at a time. So no, the strategy to help kids, the the auditory and the oral strategy is to say it when you read it, say it when you write it. You kids need to hear it if they if you can't hear them, they can't hear themselves. So you may want to make sure they are sub vocalizing using that one inch voice. And now you watch their gaze shift. They look up. They say it when they read it. They look back down. They say it when they write it. Note how much they wrote before they look back up again. You're going to reach in with your red pen and you're going to scoop it. So this child wrote the words if the and then he looked back up. He wrote the words W, the letters, W, O, R, then he looked back up, D, S, then he looked back up. So if words are familiar, it may be possible copy 234, words at a time. If a word is especially long or it's new, they maybe just be copying 234, letters at a time. And then you go back and you tally how many individual letters do they cut copy a time? 1234, you're going to put it onto the rubric. So going back to the rubric, this prompt was on the board. So it was far point. There was nothing else on the board, no distractions. It was an online prompt. They the teacher wrote on the board, and there were no lines there. And then child didn't have an alpha triangle handy. And then I'm going to put all those tally marks underneath chunking, so that I know now you have data. Now you have data to use when you are scoring somebody's copying skills in terms of pushing in the student workbook is really helpful. If your school adopts a handwriting curriculum, they adopt size matters in the beginning, lots of practice on making different types of letter lines starting on green, stopping on red. Those are your standing tall lines, your slant lines. Sometimes note that the green is at the bottom because you have you can have some slant lines that go from bottom to top. Your Super C lines, smiles and frowns go forward and backward. Clock lines can be counterclockwise. Teach the kids about Super C and starting points and initial lines touch points, and then the rules for letter size one, two and three, and then stars and dice. And then you get up to an actual practice page. Looks like this in the Student Workbook, identifying the letter size. What size is uppercase F? Well, I don't make it hard, the entire alphabet is in pink. There's a pink box here. It says size one you're going to do the song and the dance. Identify the different types of letter lines. How many standing tall, lying down, or slant lines? And sometimes the answer is none. How many touch points are in there? Look at the purple letter. Count, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching, touching. Six mark, the starting point on the big purple letter. Trace the initial line. Which letter is star worthy and why are the other ones not? This is everyone's favorite section on the page, because they all look like F's. Only one of them is star worthy. The kids have to tell you why the other ones aren't. Do a little trace it, make it inside the long letter box. The kids play their own individual dice game. They rolled a four, they make four, they stop and score themselves. Now they can swap books with their neighbor, if, as long as they're kind and they roll the dice until they finish up. The lines. Note the Go lines and finish lines are here. There's a little coloring section. Note that the coloring sections are two frame stories. Starts on the upper case page. This is a frog catching fish. Ends on the lower case page. It's fish chasing after a frog, and they're intentionally detailed, even though I tell you that the the student workbook is a kindergarten level book, we don't write that anywhere on the book, because we do have older kids that are working at this level. The first year that schools districts adopt size matters, we encourage workbooks for kindergarten also, but the just the same. The cartoons are detailed because I'm promoting this, and if you're looking at my camera, I am promoting that mobility at my IPs, that push, pull movement, not this. So you just want them to call it cut. Just color in his foot, just color in the fish and model that movement. And if the kids need more practice, there's a series of activity books, 18 activity books that practice. Practice each letter inside of letter boxes. So that said. Now, are there any questions?
Jayson Davies
Well, there you have it, the one and only. Dr Bev, thank you so much. Dr Moskowitz, for sharing all of your valuable knowledge with us. We really appreciate it and just all the things that you are doing for well school based ot practitioners, but also other ot practitioners and the families that we all serve, and also thank you to well you for tuning in and enjoying this episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it, and if you did enjoy this learning experience and would like to earn a CEU for this course and dozens of other school based ot courses just like it. Please be sure to check out the OT schoolhouse collaborative at ot schoolhouse.com/collab as an extra. Thank you for tuning into this special episode. You can use promo code podcast 167 to save 25% off your first payment of the OT school house collaborative, again, that promo code is podcast 167, all one word, no spaces, and it's the numbers 167, not spelled out. Podcast 167, really appreciate you tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed this one. I hope you are able to take some of these techniques that Dr Bev talked about today and implement them into your practice as soon as possible. Again, learn more about the OT schoolhouse collaborative at ot schoolhouse.com/collab where you can earn your CEU for listening to this episode. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the OT school house podcast.
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