New research has exposed a startling truth – despite the best efforts of teachers and family members, most New Zealand children don’t hold a pencil properly.
By John Gerritsen for RNZ
In fact, only about a third use the gold-standard “tripod grip” taught by schools while more than half wrap their thumb around or across their pencils.
Equally surprising is the revelation that many seem to be coping just fine with their sometimes bizarre methods of holding a pen or pencil.
The research comes from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study run by the University of Otago and New Zealand Council for Educational Research for the Education Ministry.
It videoed nearly 800 children in Years 3, 6 and 8 writing the letters of the alphabet as many times as possible in the space of a minute.
Project lead Dr Jenny Ward from the University of Otago says researchers looked at how the children were moving and forming the letters and how legible they were.
She says they were surprised to find a lot of the students did not use the tripod grip taught by schools and favoured as the most effective way of holding a pen or pencil.
'Less functional' thumb wrap grip
“We found that about half of the students in all year levels had what's called a thumb wrap grip, which is generally considered to be less functional,” she told RNZ.
“Alongside that though, we were also interested to see that the grip really didn't determine the fluency of the students' writing.”
In short, children who used fine motor skills to manipulate their fingers independently of their wrist and arm wrote fluently regardless of how they held their pencil.
Those who relied on their wrist, arm or shoulder to manipulate the pencil were less fluent, even if they used the tripod grip to hold the pencil.
“It's broader than just a ‘one right grip’, it's how that grip functions,” Ward explains.
She says being able to write fluidly and comfortably matters.
“If we can support students to have an automatic and fluent handwriting style that they don't need to put energy into, that frees up their cognitive resources to think about what they want to write about, what vocab might be most appropriate, and how they want to organise those ideas. So it's an important part of writing,” she says.
Kids 'can kick a ball' but lack fine motor skills
At Clifton Terrace Model School in Wellington, teacher Shelly Wilson is on the frontline – instructing five-to-seven-year-olds in the art of handwriting.
She says many struggle to figure out how to hold a pencil.
“It's really hard for some children that come into school who have lovely gross motor skills, can kick a ball and run around, but they don't have the fine motor skills to be able to hold a pencil,” she says.
“Sometimes we play a lot of games to build those strengths, like playing with playdough, rolling things out, using peg games, using tongs to build that finger strength, to get those muscles moving.”
Wilson says the tripod grip is preferred, but sometimes it is difficult to persuade children to use it.
“Sometimes kids come to school with a grip that is not a tripod grip but it does not impede their development in learning to do handwriting or story writing,” she says.
“Sometimes we let it go if it's not going to impede them and I watch to see whether they could take it into cursive.”
Wilson says handwriting is an important skill and it is satisfying for the children too.
“There's that lovely sense of pride when somebody's done some published work, practiced and practiced handwriting, written a draft story and been able to publish it and they can see they've got beautiful handwriting, a beautiful story and it all looks wonderful.”
'Some pretty unique grips'
University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Jane Carroll has a special interest in handwriting.
She says there is huge variety in the way people hold a pen or pencil.
“When people hear that you're interested in handwriting and pencil grips, you do get shown some pretty unique and individualistic pencil grips,” she says.
“We've tried to replicate some of those grips that we've seen and I don't know how people write for significant amounts of times holding pens and pencils the way that they do.”
Growing evidence of benefits to handwriting
She says schools and universities are increasingly relying on handwritten work in order to reduce the risks of AI-driven cheating.
There’s also evidence that doing things in writing is better for you.
“There is emerging research that suggests that there may be benefits to writing notes by hand rather than typing them,” she says.
“The theory is that handwriting slows us down just enough that we actively process and organise information rather than just simply recording what we're hearing word for word.
"So, from a handwriting perspective, fluid handwriting still matters because we need it to be automatic so that we're thinking about what we are hearing if we're taking notes rather than just transcribing.”
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