Time to Get Serious about Handwriting Instruction: Guest Blogpost by Holly Britton

People I talk to about my work as a handwriting instruction specialist are often surprised to hear that schools are neglecting to teach handwriting. By “handwriting,” I’m not just referring to cursive; I mean any type of handwriting instruction. I’m talking about the physical act of correctly forming, sizing, and spacing letters using a pencil to get words onto paper.

Decades of research conclude the importance of learning to write by hand on cognitive processing and memory. In a study with preliterate 5-year-old children, researchers watched the brain’s activity when forming letters by hand. They found that “after self-generated printing experience, letter perception in the young children recruits components of the reading systems in the brain more than other forms of sensori-motor practice.”(James, 2012.)* Moreover, they showed that handwriting recruits the ‘‘reading circuit” of the brain— those area of the brain involved in reading— and concluded that handwriting may play an important role in reading acquisition of young children.

Regrettably, the increased amount of time needed to meet other academic and behavioral management expectations has resulted in handwriting being pushed out of the literacy block. That along with a misinformed belief that keyboarding should replace handwriting means handwriting instruction, if done at all, is often relegated to a back table where students draw and color shapes we call letters without modeling, coaching, or correction.

Today’s generations rarely see adults writing by hand using a pen on paper. They are no longer surrounded by a handwriting culture. Furthermore, classrooms often use a computer to show children how to form letters—no human hand, no pencil, no paper—then tell young students to go “practice their handwriting.” These are baby brains, new to the world and yet we assume that handwriting will be learned by simply picking up a pencil.

Handwriting provides a kinesthetic connection to the language children are learning to speak and read. True understanding happens when all centers of the brain involved in language processing are stimulated. Handwriting taps into the language network of our brain. Like reading, writing skill must be built up. The stronger the foundation, the more able and confident the learner and the more able and confident the learner, the better they will learn.

Let’s take a fresh and serious look at handwriting instruction. It may prove to be a formidable catalyst in our efforts to improve student literacy.

©2025 Holly Britton

*James, Karin H., and Laura Engelhardt. “The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Functional Brain Development in Pre-Literate Children.” Trends in Neuroscience and Education, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 32–42. Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2012.08.001