Is air writing with whole arm really a necessary step

Yes, it is an extremely useful exercise. She is resisting it because it is difficult for her — often a sign that a skill is missing. Writing tiny with a couple of squirms of the wrist does not get a rhythm or flow into the writing. it seems “easier” because there is little energy expended — but then the student complains of cramping, fatigue, etc. so how is that “easier”? And there are all the spelling errors, unreadable writing, and unwilingness to write …
I use whiteboards and wipe-off markers and/or blackboards for large smooth writing. It is best if the board is on a wall (not usually possible in my tutoring, but would be nice.) If possible, you can tilt the board up on an easel to get the body and hand up off it. The important thing is NO pressure on the writing hand for smooth flow, and NOT lying on the table and pressing the body weight through the hand, also not lying with they eye beside the pen point. If she does this and sees a result she may prefer that to air writing.
For spelling, sometimes the student can trace a word on the desk with a finger (lightly!!) instead of in the air, to be less conspicuous and feel less shy.

Oddly enough, my son’s OT is working on him on NOT using his whole arm.

Barb

bgb — this is kind of an “it depends”. If he is making stiff non-fluid movements that may be a problem and she may be trying to reduce uncontrolled motion. On the other hand, there are OT’s out there who may not know much about handwriting specifically and who may teach non-productive habits because of what they themselves learned.

I think it depends on whether or not the child benefits from this type of kinesthetic input.

I know at least one dysgraphic child who resisted arm movements for remedial reading instruction, and who was fully remediated in reading without them. Dysgraphia is a neurological condition that involves faulty or inefficient pathways for expressing symbols (i.e., writing). It may be that arm movements demand too much brain-power from a dysgraphic, actually detracting from symbol processing. Or, it could be that the dysgraphia results in poor kinesthetic feedback from arm movements.

In the past I have relied on the child’s feedback to determine whether to include arm movements (or even writing of symbols during reading instruction, which is one of the key strategies in the Phono-Graphix approach I use). I consider this valuable information that the child is providing me about what he/she knows does not work. So far, at least, I have found that accommodating the child’s preference has always worked for me.

Arm movements are clearly beneficial for a majority of students. I am not convinced, however, that it is necessary or even desirable for students who object to it strenuously.

Nancy

This woud be a very interesting question to pose on the dysgraphia list at http://groups.yahoo.com . There is an adult dysgraphic there who often provides valuable insights.

Nancy

I used to favor going with the child’s flow - but now I choose my battles… and that is one I usually (though not always) choose to fight. In five years at New Community, I saw that the teachers who stuck with the program consistently had better results.
Generally, I will negotiate to do it - completely, enthusiastically, whatever :-)) — for, say, four weeks and then re-visit the issue. (BTW I work with older students.) My students are generally surprised that I’m willing to negotiate - I don’t have a history of letting them steer. If she’s accustomed to having her say/ way in things academic, then it’s probably *not* worth being the focus of that battle; save it for something more important :-) After that time, usually it’s gotten easier for the student and they can see that it helps.
The logic behind it is that learning the motions with “gross motor” (big motions) is good development towards then learning with fine motor. It is also developmental - once someone *has* learlned the “big muscle” way, then they need to move on to the little way.

I’ve had a lot of experience with a lot of students who “know the way they learn best”. After many years I’ve gotten very cynical — if they know so much already, why am I being hired to solve their massive problems? No doubt there are people out there with real difficulties, but I keeep meeting the results of years and years of practicing bad habits. As Sue suggested here or elsewhere, give it an honest try for a reasonable amount of time (at least a few weeks) and see if there is even a little progress.
Also, be a little cautious of specialized chat groups — some people are truly helpful, but a lot are just out playing Ain’t It Awful and you can spend a long time on complaints and end up worse off.

>My 12 year old is resisting doing it. She will use her finger and make >little letters and numbers sloppily, but I’ve read it should be done with >the whole arm. She is suppose to do it in her reading and math lessons >and was wondering if it is a nescessary step.

I went back to re-read the post, and am wondering what the arm movements in this situation would be a necessary step *for*? At what level is your 12yo working? How are the arm movements incorporated into the lessons? Are they supposed to improve her handwriting? Her memory? If memory, is it for spelling?

The suggestion to observe for a period time and see if the movements achieve the desired effect is an excellent one. From what I have seen, it helps most students a lot, does nothing for a few, and actually interferes with learning in some. Sometimes the raised stress level can be seen clearly, especially in younger children with severe dysgraphia. I have found that this kind of stress interferes with learning, so I try to minimize it.

I do think dysgraphics have specialized learning requirements. Since it is a neurological disorder, it is very unlikely to respond to sensory stimulation. Requiring kinesthetic expression of symbols exercises a dysgraphic’s learning weakness but, because it is a neurological problem, the exercise won’t make the skills stronger or automatically reinforce other skills.

I am still looking for a single technique that is helpful for every child. Arm movement certainly isn’t it, since I have seen too many children make wonderful progress in reading remediation without it. Perhaps it is more important for handwriting remediation?

People with disabilities are often the best sources of unbiased information, in my experience. I’m sure many have had years of instruction using arm movements. Perhaps they would be the most likely to appreciate whether arm movements were helpful or not to them, and to be able to put forth a theory as to why or why not. I wouldn’t discount them out-of-hand.

Nancy

It is basically for memory(spelling sight words and on cloud nine math). But she could benefit from the handwriting aspect as well. Thanks for the input from everyone it helps to get a better understanding of what’s going on.

Whilst their has been plenty of discussion of Arm Movements.
Has anyone actually simply tested it themself?

I’ve just been writing letters in the air with my finger.
Also writing with my arm.
Perhaps you could take half a minute to try it yourself?
The finger writing seemed a rather quick automatic action?
Whereas the arm writing was a much slower and thoughtful action.
Where mentally imaging the letter was also more noticable.
The larger , slower movement of the arm seemed more precise in defining the letter, than the finger writing.

So perhaps you could simply try it for yourself, and report on your own experience of it?
Geoff.

Air-writing in Lindamood-Bell is to cause the child to image the letters or numbers to aid memory. I’m not sure how much this coincides with OG philosophy. Unless I missed the boat entirely, my impression was that the child is to write the word moving the arm, but not huge. You want the child to be able to retain the image that he has air-written, and it shouldn’t be written so big that he can’t “see” everything he has written. For example, I do tell my kids that they have an imaginary whiteboard in front of them and that they should be able to image the whole word on that white board.

I do have one boy who tends to stretch his arm out straight and writes these huge letters. I do prefer that he write with a bend at the elbow. I do also use a real whiteboard, as Victoria suggested, but I have a problem doing that with the kids with whom I am also doing handwriting work, because they often are using a special pencil grip and I don’t have grips large enough to fit my markers. So I don’t want the child to revert to the poor grip when writing on the whiteboard.

Janis

I use handwriting as one approach into getting rid of reversals, attending to details, reducing errors, etc.
I have an awful lot of students who *think* they can read (and write), whose parents and teachers think they can read, and everyone thinks, well, there is just this pesky little spelling problem, or speed problem, or following instructions problem, or problem with the nasty teacher who demands cursive — and on investigation it turns out that the reading is so terribly inaccurate that of course the kid is missing eighty percent of the instructions, the spelling, the speed, the cursive, because he is actually skipping eighty percent of the words in reading. I just started with another of these last week; he claims to have “read” Harry Potter, well he started four of the books and “read” them for a while but never got around to finishing any of them — and when I gave him the first page of Hatchet, at a much lower level, he made at least a dozen errors; then he remembered that oh yeah he had “read” Hatchet and he sort of remembered there was a plane crash …
The LMB approach and OG approach and what I do (which is not brand name but on the same track) is to go back and attend to all those pesky details, not skip over everything, especially not to skip over the things that are a bit difficult. Details add up. I suggest the following exercise: lift up one sheet of paper. Try to measure its weight. Try to measure ists thickness. So near zero that you would just discount it, right? Now pick up a package of a thousand sheets of paper. Quite heavy? Quite bulky? Something you couldn’t just ignore? The same goes for reading all the little words, reading the endings, not substituting a similar word, working consistently from left to right and top to bottom, forming letters consistenlty, writing left to right and top to bottom, noting every single letter in a word … Sure, you can let a little thing go once or twice, but by the time you have let a thousand little things go it is no longer a little thing, it is a huge gaping hole.
The particular exercise of whole-arm writing is intended to get a smooth kinesthetic flow and to draw full attention to the writing. Handwriting improves when the hand and eye are no longer glued to the table, speed improves with even flow and rhythm, reversals reduce gradually as the letters are learned as kinesthetic rhythmic patterns, spelling improves with smooth flow and attention to detail and less energy going in counterproductive directions (wrist-twist writing is actually harder, gives write’s cramp), and other forms of hand-eye cordination including even keyboarding benefit as well. No doubt there are cases of handicaps where large writing is really impossible, but in the great majority (including myself; I was taught this way) it is a matter of re-training habits. We all cling to our habits whether they be bad or good, so any habit-changing is fraught with difficulty and conflict. You can avoid conflict and play “there, there, of course you can’t”, or you can face up to the difficulties and give a fair try at overcoming them. You never know if you can unless you try, and try seriously with some time and effort.
By the way I refuse to use those pencil grips. If you can use a vertical board that prevents the lying-on-the-table position and a better grip comes naturally.

[quote:586bf249d3=”Nancy3”]
I do think dysgraphics have specialized learning requirements. Since it is a neurological disorder, it is very unlikely to respond to sensory stimulation. Requiring kinesthetic expression of symbols exercises a dysgraphic’s learning weakness but, because it is a neurological problem, the exercise won’t make the skills stronger or automatically reinforce other skills.

I am still looking for a single technique that is helpful for every child. Arm movement certainly isn’t it, since I have seen too many children make wonderful progress in reading remediation without it. Perhaps it is more important for handwriting remediation?

People with disabilities are often the best sources of unbiased information, in my experience. I’m sure many have had years of instruction using arm movements. Perhaps they would be the most likely to appreciate whether arm movements were helpful or not to them, and to be able to put forth a theory as to why or why not. I wouldn’t discount them out-of-hand.

Nancy[/quote]

I’m always looking for something that will help every student - but recognize it’s not likely to happen. THere’s always going to be that one student who forgot to read the manual on how they were supposed to learn :-) — but that does make it tough, because sometimes what’s effective in the long run is difficult or counter-intuitive.

I’d agree that the big-arm movements are much more directly connected to handwriting remediation — and dysgraphia can mean that it just takes too much cognitive energy for that, for it to reinforce other skills instead of competing with them; for other students, it can be the bridge between a strong visual-kinesthetic modality and the language realm.

Janis, some of the OG systems do use air writing, but afaik, most of them aren’t even concerned whether it is in the air or on the table. I’m just adding that as a clarification. You mentioned OG. I’m not sure it even applies to the original question. But I don’t let a little think like that get in my way. :-)

—des

That was my training… what mattered was the gross motor involvement. Lots of older students were a *lot* happier writing on the table - and for some students that solid background made a difference, whether it was the table or a blackboard.
Another way of practicing is to give ‘em sidewalk chalk and send ‘em out to the pavement. We had our middle schoolers do that when we got sixth graders and to our glee the high schoolers complained that they dind’t get to do that… hey, we *knew* if we’d *told* them to do it, it would have been “baby stuff!!!” but they had a ball …