More Curricular has recently announced the launch of the More Handwriting App. The app aims to offer a comprehensive analysis of children’s handwriting by evaluating their automaticity skills and letter, word and join formations against the UK curriculum. By evaluating a child’s handwriting with the hybrid paper-based and online assessment tool, parents and teachers can identify any problems with a child’s handwriting and take steps to help them improve.
The idea for the app was born when More Curricular Co-founder, Yvette Reinfor, was working as a teacher in FE Colleges. She began to notice that there was an increase in the number of boys at colleges struggling academically who also had a similar level of poor handwriting ability. “The teachers around me blamed the children’s poor handwriting on modern technology,” she says, “Children aren’t writing anymore, so do they really need that skill for the modern workplace? Well, my best friend’s son was struggling with writing, but unlike his peer group, he didn’t have a phone and wasn’t particularly interested in computer games and technology, so I realised that the problem was rooted more deeply.”
With further research, Reinfor discovered that good handwriting skills were linked to ‘handwriting automaticity’, which is the ability to write automatically so that your brain can focus on the content you are writing rather than the mechanics of writing itself. The research showed that poor handwriting skills often lead to lower grades because students struggled with communicating their ideas and engaging with learning.
“The More Handwriting app aims to tackle this issue”, Reinfor revealed in a statement, “With the app, handwriting automaticity can be identified quickly so that action can be taken. After all, how can a child improve their learning if they don’t know how to learn?”
The More Handwriting app is at www.morehandwritingapp.co.uk