Zoe is a young girl of 6 years who has a chromasomal diagnosis. Zoe has from a young age shown excellent ability to access words for reading, she has a lot of language but has struggled to use her speech for communication with others.

Until this year Zoe has been attending a mainstream primary school with a special unit attached, where she spent a lot of her time. Since transitioning to the Junior School, Zoe spends more time in the mainstream classroom with support.

Despite being aware of letters with words when reading Zoe found it very difficult to write letters with correct spatial orientation and formation. The Hemispheres Think Write Handwriting Programme (HTW) was introduced. We applied the cognitive components of the programme to help link together her knowledge of letters with the correct formation and spatial placement of letters and words.

As her knowledge improved her interest in writing her letters grew, however, it was evident that eye hand integration and spatial planning were a challenge for her too. To help address this Zoe started the visual planning activities at an early stage, building her skills for integrating her visual skills with the movements going on in her hand.

Zoe is a learner who needs repetition and consistency and through delivering the programme at home, it soon transitioned into school, where Zoe has proven to be the more able handwriter in her class. Zoe, with the support of HTW, is now able to write in full cursive with developing spatial placement, in line with her same aged peers.

How did HTW help Zoe?

Zoe learnt to:

• Categorise the 26 letters of the alphabet into 3 category groups for letter formation.
• Remember the letters in each category group and recall them with ease.
• Associate each with the correct height and spatial placement.
• Write each individual letter with the lead in and lead out line.
• Learn to write and position the letters on the baseline.
• Learn to join the letters together to make words.
• Learn to write all letters with the correct formation automatically.

Testimonial from Zoe's teacher Rebecca:

For the last 6 months I have been using the Think Write Programme with a child in my class and have been incredibly impressed with the progress she has made. Her attitude and approach towards writing is very positive and she finds it much easier than children in my class who have not had access to this type of approach. Having tried a number of other handwriting programmes in the special needs centre I feel the programme offers everything we are looking for to develop and support the children in their writing. As a school we have also struggled to find an interactive approach to teaching handwriting and are very excited about the possibility of introducing Think Write across the school.