The Effects of a Whole‐Class Kindergarten Handwriting Intervention on Early Reading Skills

Abstract

The ultimate goal of reading is to comprehend written text, and this goal can only be attained if the reader can decode written words and understand their meanings. The science of reading has provided compelling evidence for the subskills that form the foundation of decoding. Decoding words requires understanding of the alphabetic principle and letter–sound, or grapheme–phoneme, correspondence. In the first year of formal schooling (kindergarten), this same understanding is also required for young learners who are learning to write the letters of the alphabet. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of a handwriting intervention, Write Start–K, that emphasizes the recall, retrieval, reproduction, and repetition (the 4Rs model) of grapheme–phoneme relations. We conducted a two‐group, pre/posttest study at two Australian schools across four kindergarten classes (n = 77 students). One school received the intervention, and the other continued with standard teaching. Participants (mean age = 5 years 8.45 months, standard deviation = 4.18 months) at both schools were assessed at baseline, immediately after the eight‐week intervention period, and at 12 weeks following the end of the intervention (follow‐up). We used linear mixed models to determine the statistical significance of effects over three time intervals. We identified statistically significant Group × Time effects for letter name knowledge and word reading, whereas changes in letter sound knowledge and nonsense word–reading fluency approached statistical significance. These results indicate that a handwriting intervention, incorporating repeated practice in recalling and reproducing letter forms, had a statistically significant impact on early reading skills.

Literacy Activities that Highlight Emergent and Beginning Literacy Development

“…Students in the early Letter Name–Alphabetic stage, with a rudimentary COW‐T, who may have taken longer than others to acquire a COW‐T, and who have difficulty retaining sight words need a wider array of activities including tracing words as described in programs that use a visual–auditory–kinesthetic–tactile approach like Fernald or Orton‐Gillingham practices (Gillingham & Stillman, 1997; Miccinati, 1979). Handwriting is another sensory input that advances and complements orthographic development and sight word learning (Ray et al, 2021). Once students can write CVC words accurately without undo hesitation, they write their word family word sorts into columns in word study notebooks, and this is when spell checks with developmentally appropriate lists at the end of 3–5 days of study can begin.…”

The Effectiveness of Using Big Book Media on Early Reading Skills in 5-6 Years Old

“…Naturally, children aged 5-6 years have entered the process of the early reading stage, in order to become children in early childhood who are good at reading. It is their interest and curiosity that drive them to learn to read (Aay, 2016;Nicholas & Rouse, 2021;Ray et al, 2021). The reading skills of children must be optimized to support the maximum growth of children's intelligence (Basyiroh, 2017).…”

Scoping the field of literacy research: how might a range of research be valuable to primary teachers?

“…WhileHurry et al (2021) examine the apparent effects of Reading Recovery 10 years after the intervention was used, most studies measure effects over a shorter timescale. They explore a range of aspects that might be valuable to skills development, such as the effects of: a handwriting programme on early reading skills(Ray et al, 2021); teaching questioning on comprehension(Blything et al, 2020); a text structure intervention on reading and writing informational text(Strong 2020); and of an interactive shared reading intervention on English language learners' vocabulary(August et al, 2021). Some articles focus on developing linguistic comprehension.…”