Dealing with Handwriting Problems? Turn to qwertyuiop
In case you don’t find yourself seated in front of a computer on a regular basis, the sequence ‘qwertyuiop’ may seem a bit odd. Should that be the case, you are probably equally unfamiliar with its neighbors-- ‘asdfghjkl’ and ‘zxcvbnm.’ In combination, these represent the three main rows of letters on a keyboard.
They came to the fore recently when I was reading an article about Philip Roth, the novelist. Talking about Roth’s drive, passion and/or obsession with writing, it said “Never a day passes when he does not stare at those three hateful words: qwertyuiop, asdfghjkl, and zxcvbnm.”
There has been lots of discussion about the ‘qwerty’ keyboard and its far from perfect design. But in this day and age, when children are finding handwriting more and more onerous, keyboarding offers lots of advantages. And so ‘qwertyuiop’ ‘asdfghjkl’ and ‘zxcvbnm’ have a lot to offer.
Still and all, even when primary school children are managing a mouse with ease, most of them are not given the opportunities they need to become automatic at keyboarding. Once skill in keyboarding is attained, writing becomes far easier—and far more readable.
There are lots of good programs out there to teach young children graders how to use a keyboard smoothly and effectively. What you need to do is set aside about 15 to 20 minutes three or four times a week and make sure your child uses the program you have selected. A useful site you might want to look at is
http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~technology/keyboarding/freeware.html
For children who cannot manage all the fingers on both hands, you can teach keyboarding with even a single finger—the index finger. Simply support the child’s preferred hand and allow him or her to press the letter keys that are requested by the program. The end result is that the typing may not be as fast as when both hands are used, but it will still be faster and smoother than handwriting.
