These warm up/reviews should be followed by more cognitively engaging writing tasks. They recommend that the continuing handwriting and keyboard instruction is provided once or twice a week with students doing warm-ups such as (a) writing the alphabet from memory, (b) copying interesting target sentences containing all the letters of the alphabet, (c) writing letters that come before and after other named letters, or (d) exchanging papers and circling letters that are illegible and discussing how to make them legible to others for purposes of written communication. Some research indicates that students need continuing handwriting instruction as well as explicit keyboard instruction (touch typing) beyond fourth grade.

Writers in Grades 4-6 – Handwriting Vs TypingĪs children get older in school, keyboarding becomes more a part of their every day routine. Overall, keyboarding did allow for faster writing (Feng et al, (2019). When it comes to written expression, one study indicated that the relationship between handwriting and keyboarding indicated that the writing quality of students, whether handwritten or use of a keyboard, were relatively competitive.

Writing By Hand vs Typing for Written Expression

Handwriting notes vs typing notes