Feedback on Handwriting WIthout Tears from OT Staff

I received some great feedback from the occupational therapy staff members within the school district after giving an informal presentation on what I had learned through my recent Level 1 Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) certification.  Both occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants reported that they utilize the HWT curriculum, materials, and concepts frequently during intervention sessions.  They were already familiar with many of the multi-sensory manipulatives that I included pictures of in a previous post.  They also utilize the developmentally appropriate teaching order of HWT curriculum as well.

Aside from common intervention methods for handwriting remediation, I also introduced occupational therapy personnel to The Print Tool Assessment, which is a HWT non-standardized handwriting assessment.  All OT staff reported that they rely on clinical reasoning and personal judgment when scoring handwriting components such as letter size, line placement, and word spacing.  The Print Tool provides a more uniform and objective way of measuring the components of handwriting through use of a transparent layover that indicates acceptable boundaries for placement, spacing, and sizing. They loved the idea of incorporating this assessment as part of their program.  All staff felt that a uniform assessment tool would be helpful in supporting findgins when completing progress reports or reporting to parents/teachers in individualized education plan (IEP) meetings.  I provided them with resources and hard copies of relevant information.  They were grateful for hard copies so that they could follow along during my presentation.  I also directed them to the handwriting without tears advocacy website which allows access to many resources.  Those who have been trained or certified in HWT have more access but all are able to utilize some portions of the site by creating a username and login.  The website is http://www.hwtears.com/advocate/introduction.