School OT thoughts

          Are you looking for current curriculum based data on handwriting?  Check out AIMSWeb® Growth Table for Total Words Written.  This source provides multi-year aggregate data with norms for grades 1 through 8 at fall, winter, and spring assessment periods.  Students are asked to write spontaneously for 3 minutes.  The student’s score is determined by the total number of words written within the 3 minute time frame.  A “word” is considered any letter or group of letters separated by a space even if the word is misspelled or is a nonsense word.      

          This may serve as an appropriate curriculum based measure for assessing a student’s handwriting speed without compounding factors such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, or content.  The data does not, however, examine legibility factors such as alignment, letter formation, letter size and proportion, or slant which should be considered if legibility is an area of specific concern.  This measure does not differentiate between cursive and manuscript writing styles, but certainly can provide information regarding basic student handwriting performance in relation to nationally normed grade level expectations.