Pen Grip Force, Fine Motor Skills and Handwriting in Children

Pen Grip Force Fine Motor Skills and Handwriting in Children

The Australian Occupational Therapy Journal published research examining pen-grip kinetics during writing tasks of 181 school-age children (5-12 years old) and investigate the relationship between the kinetic factors and fine motor skills.  A force acquisition pen was to measure the forces applied from the digits and pen-tip were measured during writing tasks.  Each child’s fine motor skills were also evaluated.  The results indicated the following:

• peak force and average force might not be direct indicators of handwriting performance for typically developing children ages 5-12.
• younger children showed larger force variation and lower adjustment frequency during writing.
• force control when handling a pen is significantly correlated with fine motor performance, particularly manual dexterity.

The researchers concluded that manipulation skill may be crucial when children are establishing their handwriting capabilities.

Reference:  Lin, Y. C., Chao, Y. L., Wu, S. K., Lin, H. H., Hsu, C. H., Hsu, H. M., & Kuo, L. C. (2017). Comprehension of handwriting development: Pen‐grip kinetics in handwriting tasks and its relation to fine motor skills among school‐age children. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal.

Read more on Writing Forces and Pencil Grasps

Read more on Fine Motor Skill Level and Handwriting

Handwriting Rubrics – This is an electronic book of 26 rubrics to assess handwriting. A rubric is a scoring guide to judge performance on a specific task.   Have you ever wanted to quantify handwriting skills such as letter formation, speed or copying? Handwriting Rubrics can be used as assessment tools to quantify an individual’s written productivity. By using the rubric, each individual can be scored based on the same criteria. FIND OUT MORE.

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3 Strategies to Help Children Initiate and Plan Motor Skills

Children who struggle with executive functioning deficits may have difficulties learning how to initiate and plan motor skills.  Here are 3 strategies to help initiate and plan when learning a new motor skill:

1. Work with children to establish the end goal.  By asking open ended or more direct questions to the child, determine specifically what the end goal is for him or her.  Pictured above is just an example of how to guide the student perhaps they want to learn how to catch a ball in gym class?  Climb the playground equipment? Write faster?  Learn self calming techniques? Maintain personal space?  Complete assignments quicker?  By establishing a specific end goal, children will understand the clear intent of why they are learning the skill which will hopefully drive intrinsic motivation.
2. Break down the goal into a series of steps.  Help the child to determine what steps need to be taken to achieve the goal ie practice sessions, modifications, etc.  Let the student help map out how to break up the skill.  Try using this four square idea to get started. Ask questions to help prompt the child if necessary but do not just provide the solution to the problem. If the student is able, write down a timeline of when each part will be completed. For example, if the student is learning how to climb stairs in a crowded stairwell, then the timeline could include activities such as climb the stairs independently with visual distractions in the stairwell, climb the stairs independently with one other student in the stairwell and finally climbing the stairs with many students in the stairwell. Set dates for each skill to be accomplished. If the student is tackling a big academic project, encourage him/her to set specific dates with specific directions for each part of the project.
3. Stop, reflect and review.  When you are moving through each “piece” of the overall goal stop, reflect and review. To encourage staying on task, the student can self talk asking “is what I am working on now going to help me achieve the goal?”.   Review and check if the student is able to repeat what was previously learned and show 100% achievement of that “piece”? Ask the student if they need to change the timeline or any strategies that are being used. Encourage the student to reflect on what, if anything, could be done to improve it to do it better the next time?

 

My Goal Tracker: This is an electronic book of data collection forms for students to track their own progress. The student can track his/her goals over time, by monitoring the skills over the course of a day, week, month or quarter. This allows the student to get a visual picture of improvement, decline or maintenance of different skills.

Find out more information here.

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