Valerie Schmidt

Introduction We have all heard the old joke of school being all about the three “R’s”, Reading ‘Ritin and ‘Rithmatik, but because of increasing class sizes and reported lack of instruction time, writing has been passed over for the more “important” subjects. The advent of computers and the increasing ease of word processing have given teachers the ultimate excuse, but most beginning composition is still being done by hand. Poor handwriting can have many adverse affects on other areas of a child’s life. It is presumably due to these secondary problems that the most common reason for referral to occupational therapy is handwriting problems (Case-Smith 2002). Clearly, more time needs to be spent on handwriting instruction but many teachers claim to not have enough time due to increasing budget cuts and a higher student/teacher ratio. The Handwriting Without Tears ® method, or HWT®, proposes to solve this dilemma by requiring only ten minutes a day to increase handwriting proficiency (Olsen, 2004). It has been adopted by the state board of education in 14 states (Olsen, 2004), but is this method efficacious?