Handwriting Without Tears First Grade Hands-On Materials

• Research shows that handwriting is a foundational skill that can influence student’s reading, writing, language use, and critical thinking (Saperstein Associates 2012).
• When children practice printing by hand, their neural activity is far more enhanced and “adult-like” (Bounds 2010).
• Research states that learning how to write by hand is a necessary motor exercise (Saperstein Associates 2012; James and Gauthier 2006; James 2012; Berninger 2012).
• Children consistently do better writing with a pen. They write more and they write faster (Berninger 2009).

Correlations for ELA

Correlations for Math

The Handwriting Without Tears® curriculum draws from years of innovation and research to provide developmentally appropriate, multisensory tools and strategies for your classroom. The program follows research that demonstrates children learn more effectively by actively doing, with materials that address all styles of learning.

Teaching Strategies
Unique strategies that appeal to all. We teach actively and explicitly in a developmental sequence. Our program uses multisensory teaching to incorporate all the senses in a fun and engaging way, ensuring that all children learn regardless of learning style or background.

Developmental Sequence
We teach the easiest skills first, then build on prior knowledge. Our teaching sequence takes advantage of child development and brain research to promote effective learning and good habits.

Developmental Order
Teaching letters in a developmental order helps children master skills and boosts confidence. We teach capitals first, and then lowercase letters. All letters are taught in small groups of similar formation. Children master the easier letter groups, and then move to the more difficult letters groups.

Multisensory Teaching
We help children develop their writing skills through explicit, multisensory, play based instruction. Children move, touch, feel, and manipulate real objects as they learn the habits and skills essential for writing. We use music to speak to children and promote movement and memory. Other multisensory lessons in the teachers’ guides use Voices, Letter Stories, Door Tracing, Air Writing, and Mystery Letter Games to teach letter formation and placement on lines.

Learn & Check
In all of our workbooks, we teach children to check their letter, word, and sentence skills after new lessons. Students check their letters for correct start, steps, and bumping the lines. Words are checked for correct size, placement, and closeness. Sentences are checked for correct capitalization, word spacing, and punctuation.

Review & Mastery
In our cursive program, mastery of concepts is reinforced with three levels of Review & Mastery activities throughout student workbooks. The sections follow a group of letters and focus on reinforcing the formation of all previously taught letters.

Child Friendly, Simple Language
Our consistent, child friendly language evolved in response to complicated letter formation terminology in other programs. When teaching letter formation, we eliminate language that assumes that children understand left/right orientation, clockwise/counter-clockwise, or forward/backward circles. We make it easy by using fewer, carefully selected words that children know or understand. Our workbooks are accessible and friendly, yet also promote excellence. We want children to practice correctly, therefore our workbook pages promote efficient, effective practice for each letter.

Large Step-by-Step Models
It is much easier for children to understand how to form letters if you show them how. Our workbooks contain large step-by-step images that show students how to make each part of every letter.

Black & White, Simple, Clean Design & Illustrations
The black and white pages in our workbooks are clean and clear. We deliberately avoid visually confusing backgrounds, colored graphics, crowded pages, and multicolored lines. Our simple workbook pages are appealing and invite children to color and draw once they have finished the lesson.

Our illustrations promote left-to-right directionality. This is a unique feature of our workbooks. The illustrations go left to right across the page to encourage correct visual tracking and writing direction.

Lefty Friendly
Our workbooks are lefty friendly. Teaching pages provide models on the left and right so that left-handed children can easily see the model they are copying. Lefties never have to lift their hands or place them in an awkward position to see a model. Children always make their best letter directly beside a model. This design encourages excellent letter practice for both left- and right-handed children.