Children Who Learn To Write In Capitals At Home

[Guest]

I wonder if anyone can give me some advice about how to support a child in our preschool please? She has recently started writing her name and writes each letter in capitals. We haven't had a chance to talk to mum or dad about it but we think probably when her parents write with her at home they write in capitals. Try as we might we can't seem to get her to write the lower case letters and she gets quite cross when we try to correct her, however gently!

 

She is also confused when we talk about letter sounds because she knows all the letter names and can't really tie the two together, especially when we sound out words for her to write.

 

She'll be going to school next September and we really want to encourage her now that she's interested in writing. Obviously we want to support her to write in lower case letters because we feel that otherwise she'll have a whole year of writing in capitals and that will be even harder to break when she gets to primary school.

 

We'd be grateful for any help or advice anyone can offer.

 

Madgesty

[Guest]

Hi,

 

So many parents teach their children capital letters etc and feel that they've really helped their child - if only they realised how hard it can be to correct some of these habits!

Firstly, maybe you could add some info (if you haven't already) to your 'welcome pack' to encourage the parents to use lower case letters and sounds so that the same problems don't pop up too regularly? Parents need educating too and welcome advice like this normally! Obviously, you need to talk to her parents and encourage them to support you.

 

She's in pre-school so don't panic about not knowing all the phonemes yet. Just continue saying the sounds to the group yourself and let her join in when she's ready.

 

As she seems to be a bright little girl (writing words etc) I would probably explain to her that if she writes the lower case letters, she can do 'grown-up writing' which one day, she can link together quickly and then share with her some joined writing that I'd written e.g. my shopping list. This may help with her frustration.

Children are, quite rightly, very proud of their own writing attempts, especially their name so take it gently and ensure that you model her name in lower case whenever possible without making her think that her attempt is 'wrong'.

Model lowercase letters around your setting and encourage her to try all the normal mark making activities (sand, foam, glitter etc), congratulating her as much as possible.

 

Sorry that's all for now as I need to rush off for school run!

[Inge]

I always found that we also had to talk to the parents so that they learnt why it is better to teach the lower case, if you don't they will only continue the capitols at home and child will get very mixed messages..

 

Upper case is so much easier to teach than the lower case lots of straight lines and circles.. and so hard to unlearn.. and unless parents also change will never be sorted.

 

Inge

[narnia]

Don't forget it might be a cultural issue though: I have Italian parents in my setting and apparantly, in Italy, they learn their capital letters first

[Bigsue]

I wonder if anyone can give me some advice about how to support a child in our preschool please? She has recently started writing her name and writes each letter in capitals. We haven't had a chance to talk to mum or dad about it but we think probably when her parents write with her at home they write in capitals. Try as we might we can't seem to get her to write the lower case letters and she gets quite cross when we try to correct her, however gently!

 

She is also confused when we talk about letter sounds because she knows all the letter names and can't really tie the two together, especially when we sound out words for her to write.

 

She'll be going to school next September and we really want to encourage her now that she's interested in writing. Obviously we want to support her to write in lower case letters because we feel that otherwise she'll have a whole year of writing in capitals and that will be even harder to break when she gets to primary school.

 

We'd be grateful for any help or advice anyone can offer.

 

Madgesty

 

I find this really interesting in children last year we had an extremely bright child writing her name and other words in capitals and she would correct us if we wrote it any differently It was the parents they admitted it. However now school say its something she will have to relearn

 

I tell my parents on their visits that its best to write in lower case so you learn it correctly of you will need to relearn, they are often really surprise and don't actually realise they are doing it.

I now change childrens name if written in capitals so we model the correct way and hope that helps them.

 

Sue

[laura]

Its a pet hate of ours. All our things go home with their name written with lower case and still parents do it all uppercase. We have letter learning leaflet explaining sounds and letter formation.

 

As for her insisting they are the letter names we have always said ' yes it is an A but it makes the sound 'a' ' and hope that it sinks in!

[mps09]

also - perhaps we need to send a petition to some toy manufacturers! and sets of magnets for the fridge - so often sold as capitals!!

 

We also had a child at pre-school who has just begun to write her name and does SaRah (not her real name! lol) and when I spoke to mum she said that they only had a capital R on the fridge! but she's a nice mum so I told her to take it off!

 

I also make sure that when a child starts (and we issue them with a Bookstart bookbag) I specifically tell parents to write the child name in Clllll Clllll format as you would expect to see it, as this is the way they will learn to read and write their name - usually gets the message across.

 

ps. is there a 'proper' way to describe this format?

[Greenfinch]

I also blame all these awful electronic toys which claim to be educational but completely pronounce letters incorrectly phonetically.

I am working on a parent pack to help guide home learning etc as so many parents want to help their children and it can get quite frustrating when we have to tell them to please NOT do certain things. Am thinking about a CDRom with correct phonics etc.

I will follow this thread with interest - anyone got any good ideas for how they do it?

[Lyanne]

I think as narnia said, it can be a cultural thing: remember also some other alphabets don't have capitals & lower case letters.

[Susan]

Tina Bruce would advocate learning and writing capitals is more natural as they are made up more often of straight lines, so if you are into schema, dont worry!

 

That being said I have always found it extremely difficult to break that habit and even in yr1 some children will still write their names in capitals.

[Guest]

I also make sure that when a child starts (and we issue them with a Bookstart bookbag) I specifically tell parents to write the child name in Clllll Clllll format as you would expect to see it, as this is the way they will learn to read and write their name - usually gets the message across.

 

ps. is there a 'proper' way to describe this format?

 

Think it's called "Title Case"

[Guest]

Hands up! I am sorry people I am that mother who didn't know what to do when my child was into learning letters. It was before she was 3 and she was seeing capitals everywhere and was so interested. She read the letters in street names, car number plates and off my laptop keyboard. Capitals are everywhere!

 

I didn't take it so seriously at first because she was so young and wasn't due to start school until she was nearly 5 which was this September., however I realised it was a problem when she asked me to spell a friends name (I was busy doing something but spelt out the word) when I looked it was perfectly legible. Still not quite 3!

 

I started seeking advice and not really getting any I decided that the best I could do was to reinforce that what she was writing in was Capitals and real writing was in lower case. Thankfully Pre-school helped dramatically by introducing Jolly Phonics in her pre-school year. She turned 4 early in the year and so had the maturity and obviously the letter knowledge to pick it up quite quickly. They did one letter each week and the children had to bring in an item that began with that letter and they learnt the song to go with that letter sound.

 

I think without that whole year of learning the letter sounds in such a fun way she would have found school harder. I have to say I really held back in that year from teaching her anything because I felt she was so far ahead in some ways and yet I knew the capitals would really hinder her progress. I reinforced the Jolly Phonics and bought her some lower case foam letters to play with in the bath.

 

Anyway, she got into a fantastic school this September. After reading your posts I will make an appointment to speak with them and see how she is getting on but I noticed only today that she is beginning to form over half the letters of her name correctly.

 

Thank you to whoever it was that said to encourage the child to write in 'adult' writing - I think that will work for my daughter.

[mundia]

Hi there tnprncss, welcome to the forum and thankyou for making your first informative post. Its always good to hear a parent's perspective on supporting their children to write (or read or whatever members are discussing). As you say Capitals are everywhere, and children often take more notice of shop signs etc because of their size.

 

The capital letters v lower case debate has always been of interest to me, when I learned that a setting I support told me they use a handwriting programme called 'handwriting Without tears' and this is completely based on learning Capitals first. However, this programme was written in the US when children start school later and is really aimed at the 5-6 age group. We are frequently talking of chidlren in the 3-4 age group.

 

Although some research suggest that writing capitals is easier for children because they are mostly made of straight lines, it is not the lines themselves that makes the letters.. it is placing them in the correct angle joining each other in the right place. I have always said if a child cant draw a triangle then they are not ready for writing letters, likewise Ive often heard said that children who still draw people with arms and legs coming out of the head, do not yet have the visual skills for writing. Children's early drawings are often made of those large circular movements which is the basis of many lower case letters.

 

 

Hmm, interesting. I think some extra reading is in order.

[Guest]

I have always said if a child cant draw a triangle then they are not ready for writing letters, likewise Ive often heard said that children who still draw people with arms and legs coming out of the head, do not yet have the visual skills for writing. Children's early drawings are often made of those large circular movements which is the basis of many lower case letters.

 

 

That thing about the people with arms and legs coming from the head is interesting. Do you know where this has come from? I have children that draw like this still so it would be nice to be able to make an argument that they just aren't ready for writing yet!

Edited October 6, 2010 by Guest

[fay]

I have been working with OT's who promote alot of shape work before letter formation and then 'handwriting without tears',

Our new scheme teaches capitals first, albeit very briefly, and we have been encouraging independence in name writing so many children have learnt to write their names before being properly taught lower case.

We have a lot of "badly" written names but interestingly a number of children who continue to use capitals or badly formed letters in their name do not go on to use them in their writing when they are taught the correct letter formation.

I find it helps to think about them as signature's - how many adults have signatures that can be easily read? We show children how we write signatures to encourage them to have a go and then later on we talk about writing our signatures and writing for other people and how important it is to write a certain way so that we can write quickly and other's can read it. In general if all the skills they need for handwriting are in place they progress well.

We work hard to develop all the skills the children will need for handwriting before beginning to teach letter formation and as a guide to readiness look for a mobile tripod grip and the ability to draw the following l-O +/ \ X as a minimum (circle should be anticlockwise)and preferably a triangle and square as well.

The shapes are found in the Beery VMI test which is for visual motor integration and it has been used in a number of longitudinal studies and good results at 4/5yrs correlate strongly with progress all through school.

I hope I have attatched some are ideas for helping children write shapes, but they were written as a SEN programme so need to adapted for wave1 teaching.

There is also a Staffs NHS sheet on pre-handwriting skills, I find giving parents lots of advice on pre-handwriting activities is more useful than showing them how we write letters.

pre_writing_instructions.doc

www.northstaffs.nhs_pre_writing.pdf

[Cait]

Thanks for those, they look useful

[Guest]

We have several children who need to do a lot of finger/wrist strengthening before writing and so have a 'finger-strong' group - these ideas will be brilliant for that, thank you. We have started this year to use a program called 'writedance' which introduces all the handwriting moves through whole body, twohanded movement to music. The children enjoy it, and I'll let you know if our handwriting improves.

As for using capitals it is a personal dislike of mine, but I'd rather children wrote without fear so I grin and bear it while modelling like fury and introducing the idea that capitals are really special letters, used for important jobs, like starting your name or (later!!) starting a sentence. Somehow or other we manage to be using lower case most of the time by May or so!

My daughter was surprised that parents thought capitals are OK - she said it's really rude to text in capitals as it's the equivelent of shouting - I don't know if that's general or just a 'round here' thing.

Edited October 19, 2010 by marywilliam

[Fredbear]

Yes i have been told off by dear friends many moons ago when i was mobile phobic, that it was rude to text in capitals, but i didn't know how to change it into lower case, silly me, sounds funny now. I think i may have grown up just.

[teahead]

Thanks for the downloads, very useful. xx

[Guest]

Why do they do it?

 

I believe that parents don't teach letters & capitals at home because they think it is better than phonics & lower case, they do it because they don't have any reason not to.

 

Capitals do after all come first in every sentence and name, so it seams quite obvious to teach them first.

 

Phonics are still very new (considering a parent learned the alphabet several decades ago).

 

To teach the child, teach the parent.

[Lyanne]

Why do they do it?

 

I believe that parents don't teach letters & capitals at home because they think it is better than phonics & lower case, they do it because they don't have any reason not to.

 

Capitals do after all come first in every sentence and name, so it seams quite obvious to teach them first.

 

Phonics are still very new (considering a parent learned the alphabet several decades ago).

 

To teach the child, teach the parent.

 

I'm 40 and was taught to use lower case letters before I learnt upper case... don't have many preschool parents older than me! I find I have to tell out uoung students not to use capital son the children's work, or fancy letters.

[Susan]

That thing about the people with arms and legs coming from the head is interesting. Do you know where this has come from? I have children that draw like this still so it would be nice to be able to make an argument that they just aren't ready for writing yet!

 

Have just caught up with this thread again.

 

Sue Palmer and Ros Bayley advocate this in "Foundations of Literacy".

Interestingly, I had a child of 5 1/2 in yr1 whose drawings were very immature in this way but whose handwriting was very neat and precise and when I observed her closely, welll formed!

[HappyMaz]

Just goes to show there is an exception to prove every rule! Did this girl like drawing, Susan? I have always wondered about drawing and writing development and whether a child who was very interested to learn to write but not so keen on drawing might have a mismatch between what they could draw and how well they could form letters?

[Guest]

I've always had a thing about 'now draw a picture' when children have done some work!!!

why do you want me to do it?

what if I don't like drawing?

you are putting me under pressure to perform?

how will you react if I draw a man and you see a spider?

what learning will I gain from it?

you are only keeping me at a table with pen and paper when I want to do my learning (and drawing) elsewhere that interests me.

do I really need to add a picture to my fabulous sentence 'I like my cat' as it took a lot of out of me and I will be more reluctant to come next time .

it is possible to like and beable to write but not beable to draw.

if i want to be creative i will choose paint, glue, colour, form, texture, various media, pattern not a grey pencil

its boring!!!!

WHAT THE VALUE IN IT?

[HappyMaz]

I was at a conference today, when Penny Tassoni was talking about children learning to write. She was talking about the importance of parents having high expectations for their achievement, but with a realistic understanding of child development. She elaborated on this for a bit and then warned us to take hold of our tables, because she was about to say something contraversial.

 

She went on to say that if parents wanted to teach their child to write at home, then she didn't think learning to write capitals would be the end of the world! To say there was an audible gasp in the room would be an understatement!

[Rea]

My friend has never written in lower case.

[catma]

That thing about the people with arms and legs coming from the head is interesting. Do you know where this has come from? I have children that draw like this still so it would be nice to be able to make an argument that they just aren't ready for writing yet!

 

It's a recognised stage of children's drawing development - the big head with stick arms is a precursor to the arms and legs becoming a recognisable body and grows out of sun like shapes.

 

See, I knew that college education would come in useful one day!

Cx

[Susan]

I was at a conference today, when Penny Tassoni was talking about children learning to write. She was talking about the importance of parents having high expectations for their achievement, but with a realistic understanding of child development. She elaborated on this for a bit and then warned us to take hold of our tables, because she was about to say something contraversial.

 

She went on to say that if parents wanted to teach their child to write at home, then she didn't think learning to write capitals would be the end of the world! To say there was an audible gasp in the room would be an understatement!

 

 

Tina Bruce supports this too especially if you are into schemas.

[Susan]

It's a recognised stage of children's drawing development - the big head with stick arms is a precursor to the arms and legs becoming a recognisable body and grows out of sun like shapes.

 

See, I knew that college education would come in useful one day!

Cx

 

 

I remember that too Catma, but had never seen its relevance to writing development although it does make sense.