Handwriting Pro Plus

Does your child have difficulties with writing at school?

Writing tasks require a range of different fine motor and cognitive skills including:

Correct writing posture
Appropriate pen grip and pressure
Knowledge of writing conventions
Sustained attention
Executive functioning skills
Organising thoughts
Planning and pre-writing skills
Fine motor skills
Composing a sentence, paragraph, essay and/or paper
Editing and revising writing

Some common areas students have difficulty with include:

Handwriting speed, fluency and legibility
Knowing different text types, parts of speech etc.
Planning a writing piece
Structuring their paragraphs and essays
Answering questions effectively
Correcting their mistakes
Attention to detail
Appropriately prioritising their workload
Executive functioning

What is Executive Functioning?

Executive function is a set of cognitive skills that are all used together to control and coordinate your thoughts and actions in order to achieve a goal. It can be broken down in six types of processing skills:

Planning: Planning is our ability to think ahead to identify future responsibilities, set goals to complete them, and analyse the steps needed to complete the task.
Self-monitoring: Self-monitoring is a skill to help us keep track of our own actions and performance. It allows us to better understand our actions and behaviours and how we can adjust these to make changes for future performance.
Self-control: Self-control is our ability to stop and think before acting. It is a skill that allows us to manage our thoughts, actions and emotions so that we can achieve our goals.
Working memory: Working memory is the part of our brain that temporarily stores information, particularly when we are learning. It assists us with organisation, multi-tasking, comprehension, reasoning and problem solving.
Time Management: Time management is essential in learning, helping us estimate how long a task will take to complete, have appropriate sense of urgency for tasks, coordinate our response to the performance of a task and helps us complete step-by-step procedures.
Organisation: Organisation is the way we arrange our resources and environment around us to promote the most effective use of time. Kids with strong organisational skills rely less on problem-solving and adapted learning strategies.

What is "Handwriting Pro Plus"?

“Handwriting Pro Plus” is an evidence-based handwriting program for students years 5 to 8. The program builds upon the “Handwriting Pro” program for the younger years and assesses students handwriting, practices different elements of writing and language and implements strategies for building executive functioning in writing. The workbook includes definitions of academic terms for you and your kids, an appendix of resources and a therapist manual to optimise learning delivery. The program can be easily adapted to your child’s needs in the home, school and clinic environment.

"Handwriting Pro Plus" can help your child to:

Improve handwriting speed, legibility and fluency
Be aware of good posture to ensure their body is aligned properly to reduce stress on muscles and joints when writing
Maintain an efficient pencil grasp for all writing and drawing activities
Become more confident in their handwriting
Be aware of correct punctuation
Develop and analyse independent writing goals
Understand what planning style works for them
Appropriately answer short answer questions
Learn techniques to be aware of their thoughts, actions, behaviours and emotions while writing
Learn techniques to review and check writing
Learn strategies to maintain attention
Enhance working memory through practice and take-home material
Develop prioritisation and time management skills
Learn effective organisational strategies

What is included in the program?

The program will be provided by an accredited occupational therapist, who has extensive knowledge, experience and expertise in Handwriting assessment and intervention.
A workbook that takes the child through graded levels of writing development, with revision and parent resources.
A review of your child's writing completed before and after the program to understand your child's progress and to identify if further occupational therapy intervention is required.

If "Handwriting Pro Plus" sounds like something you would be interested in for your child, or if you think your child would benefit from the program, please feel free to call us on 0427 689 963 or email us at: info@kidsontop.com.au

We look forward to helping your child become a Pro Writer!