Handwriting Without Tears: Reflective Study

In this article, the researchers used a program called Handwriting without Tears to help two preschool students write. The two preschoolers were a four year old boy and girl. The boy was diagnosed with autism and the girl was diagnosed with developmental delays. The two students were only able to write the letters in their name legibly and struggled with any other letters. This study was given to both students in a self-contained special education classroom. The researches took time to observe both students individually for 15 min during the beginning of the afternoon class period. There were four letters that both of the students focused on during the study the letters were T, H, D, F. There were four different interventions used in this
study to help the students succeed with writing. In the first interventions the teacher would explain to them what letter they were going to write using the steps from the Handwriting without Tears program.
The only way a student could move on to the next letter was if they received the two points for the letter during back to back sessions. Each time the student would start a letter the teacher will remind them to start at the smiley face that was included on their paper when they were starting to form the
letters. The students would first use the wet sponge to trace the letter on the board provided to them. They would then use a paper towel to trace the letter and they would finally use the chalk after those two steps to write the letter. Once the students finished with writing on the chalkboards they would work on the worksheets given to them. In intervention 1 the worksheet would have the letter highlighted at the top of each page with the smiley face in the corner.
Once they moved into intervention two they would start with the same chalkboard procedure but the worksheet would be different. In this intervention the letter was not written for them or highlighted but instead it was just only written in the instructions. The smiley face was still included on this worksheet as well. During intervention three the chalkboard procedure was given and then the worksheet. On this worksheet only the smiley face was given on the sheet and the students were told which letter to write on the paper. In the final intervention the students completed the chalkboard procedure and on the worksheet they were given it was only a box for them to write the letter in. They were told which letter to write and they had to complete this with no smiley face being on the paper in the corner. When all four of the interventions were completed the results showed increasing signs of the legibility of each letter given to the students. From this program both students were able to show some growth in being able to form the four letters given them during the
interventions.