Handwriting Development for Pre-kindergarten Students

1. Research Question: What are the effective handwriting development techniques to teach letter and word formation to prepare pre-kindergarten students for writing in kindergarten and beyond.

1.1. Conceptual Foundation

1.1.1. Implement the Learning Without Tears Program in my classroom

1.1.2. Compare the handwriting development of my students with the development of students not using the program

1.1.3. Administer a kindergarten writing assessment to measure my studevts' preparedness

2. Problem #1: Should teachers teach PK students to write their names and words using uppercase letters or a combination of upper and lowercase letters?

2.1. Are there negative repercussions for teaching students at a young age to write their names and words using solely uppercase letters or using a combination of upper and lowercase letters?

2.2. PK teachers generally say teaching students to write using uppercase letters because it's easier for the students to form uppercase letters

2.3. Upper grade teachers say it can be difficult to break their students out of the habit of writing solely uppercase letters.

3. Problem #2: Are there negative repercussions when students write letters using the incorrect letter strokes?

3.1. In theory, if students are using incorrect letter stokes to make lowercase letters, a teacher would stop this by teaching them to write easier uppercase letters.

3.2. However, what happens when a child uses incorrect strokes to write uppercase letters? Will they too learn to break the habit when they get to first grade?

3.3. Is the importance on the appearance of the letter rather than how the letter was formed?