Hello again.
In my last entry, I discussed the confusion that students sometimes feel when presented with an assignment that they haven’t seen before or when they have to write on paper they haven’t used before. If you watch carefully, you can see this confusion slowly but surely lead to full-blown frustration. Often that frustration will then lead to outright refusal to complete the assignment.
I once taught in a school for severely emotionally disturbed children and at the intake staffings I would always ask about what academic issues the student exhibited. Many times the response would be, “Oh, they don’t have any academic issues; they just don’t want to work, so they refuse to do all written work.” Don’t for a minute believe that students will refuse all written work just because they “don’t want to” do it. I guarantee you there is a reason for that refusal. I believe that it is our obligation as teachers and parents to help the child figure out what it is about that assignment that they perceive is difficult for them.
In my quest for solutions, I would observe my students in their mainstream classrooms, and I very quickly saw a pattern emerge. The teacher would stand up in front and say, “Take out a piece of paper, put your name in the upper right-hand corner, date under your name, class in the upper left-hand corner and assignment centered on the top middle line.” At this moment, my students were still hunting for an unused piece of paper and by the time they found one, and figured out which was the left corner and the right corner, they had forgotten what they were supposed to write where. And the worst part is that the teacher has already gone on to explain the assignment to the rest of the class, and they have begun to work. It is at times like this that anxiety and confusion (as I mentioned before) quickly blossom into full-blown frustration. If a student experiences this frustration repeatedly throughout the day and the school year, you will soon see that student refusing to complete written assignments.
After discovering this initial confusion experienced by the students, I set out to determine what I could do to eliminate it. This was the beginning of Just The Write Size Structured Writing Paper.™ If I could structure the heading of the paper in a way that left no doubt what the student was to write and where s/he should put it, then I might be able to reduce the anxiety that accompanies written assignments, at least a little bit.
Just The Write Size Structured Writing Paper is designed to provide the structure some students need in order for them to understand how to write on the paper. This goes back to their beginning handwriting instruction. Students were taught how to use the paper that came with the program and how to form their letters. Easy, right? Yes, as long as they understood what to write where, and how to do the assignment. Where did their handwriting improve? What a surprise… it improved only on that program’s special paper; there was no instruction showing them how to transfer those skills to wide-ruled or college-ruled paper.
JTWS has special lines for each item the teacher might want included in the heading of a paper, and the lines are labeled showing the student what to write on each of those lines. I’m sorry to say that I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen a student’s paper thrown away by a teacher because there was no name on the paper or it was in the wrong place. This should never have to happen.
Once a student becomes familiar with JTWS paper, the problem of right or left and what to write in the heading of a paper is eliminated and the student is one step closer to getting his assignment done. The spacing of the lines, which has been chosen by the student and parent or teacher together, is of an appropriate size so the handwriting skills can transfer to this new paper. Problem solved? Of course not. Problem getting better? Yes, it certainly is!
Thanks for “listening,” and see you in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you are planning to attend the Closing the Gap conference in Minneapolis this month, stop by our booth and say “Hi.” We would love to meet you!
Bobbie