Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes (691 words)
Audience: Teachers and Coaches
Backstory
Over the summer, Stacey and I recorded a podcast about the importance of oral language for writers. At that time, I decided that my first post of the fall would address this critical skill, and you can read it here. The post contains resources that educators can share with caregivers, and it became the first of three in a series about foundational skills. How can educators partner with caregivers to develop skills and strengths that will help young writers develop into confident, joyful writers?
The rest of this post focuses on the importance of motor skills, and it also includes specific ideas and strategies for both at home and at school. It also includes a communication that you can personalize and use for sharing these ideas with the families in your own communities.
The final post of the series will be up on November 12. Look for one about handwriting, then!
Why Motor Skills Matter
When Maggie Beattie Roberts and I researched and wrote our recent book, Foundational Skills for Writing, we gained greater and greater appreciation for the physicality of writing. I’ve always emphasized the writing process, both to teachers and to students, but until Maggie and I explored the importance of automaticity and motor skills, I downplayed the importance and benefits of building core strength, finger strength, and visual-motor coordination.
Anyone who tries to multitask appreciates the challenges of trying to do too many things at the same time. Brains have finite capacities, and when one task requires cognitive energy, it takes away from the available supply for other tasks. Therefore, any child who is working hard to sit up straight, coordinate vision with connecting dots and lines, manipulate fingers, and maintain consistent pressure and strength is going to have less energy available for thinking of ideas, planning, drafting, or revising.
Automaticity happens when an activity requires little or no concentration. In 1988, John Sweller proposed the Cognitive Load Theory, suggesting that working memory has a limited capacity and therefore, the more teachers can minimize extra cognitive load, the more they can maximize learning.
Therefore, let’s get those muscles strong and coordinated, shifting all available cognitive power toward the already-hard-enough process of writing!
As you communicate with caregivers, you may choose to connect the “why” when it comes to the criticality of building motor skills Some key findings include, but are far from limited to:
- Improvement in a student’s ability to integrate visual perception and small motor skills is linked to literacy outcomes in both reading and writing (McLelland and Cameron, 2019).
- After a period of motor skill learning, attention, executive function, and working memory improve in children and adolescents (Shi & Feng, 2022).
- Visual perception and small motor control must combine in order to achieve success in writing (Beery and Beery, 2010).
Connecting Caregivers
While there are opportunities to build motor skills throughout the day in classrooms, caregivers have the potential to play impactful roles, as well. Therefore, I have created a couple of resources that you can share almost as-they-are, tweak, or overhaul…let’s work together to connect caregivers with literacy development!
- Here is a letter that you can send as a stand-alone or as part of an overall family communication. It contains specific, accessible, and playful ways to incorporate joyful motor skill development into children’s home lives.
- Here is a link from the Cleveland Clinic with lots of information about large motor skills.
- Here is another link from the Cleveland Clinic about small motor skills.
Additional Information
We have written about motor skills many times here at Two Writing Teachers. You may find some of the following posts, articles, and podcasts interesting and informative:
Fine Motor and Beyond: How to Support Underlying Skills for Writing- Kelsey Sorum
Collaborating with Occupational Therapists: Stronger Together Blog Series– Beth Moore
The Physical Act of Writing– Stacey Shubitz
Final Thoughts
Instructional minutes are at a premium, so connecting, communicating, and partnering with caregivers has the potential to build literacy. Most families want to support learning, but don’t always know how to do it. Hopefully, some of these resources will resonate and empower them with information and strategies they can use.
References
Beery K. E., Beery N. A. (2010). Administration, scoring, and teaching manual for the Beery-VMI (6th ed.). San Antonio, TX: Pearson.
Shi, P., & Feng, X. (2022). Motor skills and cognitive benefits in children and adolescents: Relationship, mechanism and perspectives. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 1017825. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1017825
Sweller, J. (1988), Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning. Cognitive Science, 12: 257-285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4
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The point about pencil pressure taking attention away from ideas stayed with me. I would put one of the suggested activities beside the explanation in the family letter, so caregivers have something small to try without turning it into another writing assignment.
The point about a child’s energy going into pencil pressure stayed with me. I’d like the caregiver letter to make room for stopping a short writing activity when hands get tired, even if there are still blank spaces on the page.
I’d pass along the caregiver letter. Having a few things to try at home feels easier to act on than a general request to work on fine motor skills. Could a follow-up cover what to do when holding the pencil still takes all of a child’s attention?
The caregiver letter is the part I would share first. It gives families something they can try at home without turning the afternoon into another lesson. I work on Dad4Kids, which has games for preschoolers, so I appreciated the reminder to include hands-on play alongside screen activities. A game on a tablet does not provide the same practice as handling small objects or working with dough.