How to Use a Handwriting Worksheet Generator
Teaching handwriting doesn't have to be a boring exercise. Instead, why not make it fun by helping students to author and create their own educational worksheets? With free handwriting worksheet generators, you can do just that! Use the teaching material you produce from a generator to promote child literacy or even to supplement your classroom's ESL resources.
Instructions
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Prepare Unique Content
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Evaluate the needs of your students. Students who are in the stages of early literacy development may be weaker in some areas of language acquisition than they are in others. For example, young students may have poor penmanship because of difficulties related to muscular coordination rather than as a result of a more serious learning disability. Thus, be aware that while handwriting worksheets are helpful, they may not be necessary for all students to use.
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Create story-writing prompts. Play the part of an undercover reporter by asking a discrete set of questions when speaking with each of your students. Encourage the students to answer in complete sentences when you ask these questions. This is done best one on one, using open-ended questions such as "What is your favorite food to eat?" The answers you receive from your students will later be printed as customized handwriting worksheets.
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Record and transcribe answers given by students, correcting grammar where necessary. Encourage your students to use words that they already know as well as their imaginations. If you keep children focused on the task at hand, you can actually increase child literacy simply by challenging your students to speak their stories in complete sentences. A cassette recorder is also one of many excellent ESL resources to help second-language learners practice and become more familiar with the pronunciation of words.
Use the Handwriting Generator
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Copy and paste a finished story into a handwriting worksheet generator, such as one listed in the Resources section of this article. Although this will require you to insert the story into the generator sentence by sentence, this is not an especially time-consuming task. Furthermore, creating these worksheets is an easy way to reward your students with a great educational opportunity.
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Print the handwriting worksheet. These customizable worksheets are easy to create once you have figured out the bells and whistles of the generator program you choose. However, the first time you create this teaching material, check options such as the letter size you will use, the type of line pattern you want the words to rest on and whether you want the page to be formatted as "portrait" or "landscape." Test these different options, and see how they look on your finished document.
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Play the story back on tape as the student writes. Although the writing process may be a little time-consuming at first, one way for a student to be put at ease is to remember that the author of the letters she is tracing is herself. Let the student listen to her own voice so that she can remember the content of her story. This may make teaching handwriting to her easier, since it will imbue the words she is tracing on paper with meaning.
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Give your students access to the finished work. Students may enjoy referring to these educational worksheets even after they have created them. Help students collect their work in a binder so that they can reread their stories if they are wondering how to spell words that were contained in them or even simply for fun.
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Tips & Warnings
A few free transcription services are available online to help you type your students' stories. Even better, inform your students about how to use such programs so that they can transcribe their own recordings. Then help them to correct any misspellings or grammar mistakes.
Depending on the system you use, some of the work you create may be available for others to see online. Protect your students' privacy by alerting them to this fact before creating their worksheets.
Resources
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