One of the most difficult things about teaching literacy at this level can be a child's inability to form letters in print, let alone write. I found differentiating for ability in grade three writing to be next to impossible, because while some students were writing 2-3 page short stories, others literally had difficulty producing three legible sentences in the same time. Sadly, these students may not have one on one support from an assistant, and their needs are not being served in many cases. What ideas they have may remain trapped in their head, or are illegible if they make it to the page.
One solution in writer's workshop, is to have these students orally tell their stories in a writing center, while the teacher (or assistant) scribes it with a trace font. The story can be printed immediately, with grammatical errors included (have them tell you where to punctuate as they scribe, or add it later.)
Next we print off the story as a traceable page, and have the students use the sheet to write their story over the scribed words. In this way, they are practicing letter formation, and the learning is authentic because the words come from them. The words are ones they know, but may not know how to write. Spelling is learned, correctly as they read and trace words, or it can be approached by the scribe, by asking for the occasional word to be spelled. Scribing it incorrectly in that case, allows students to proofread and correct their spelling the same way any other student would.
Finally, though I have philosophical issues with handwriting to begin with, there is a cursive trace font as well. This saves me as well, because I couldn't handwrite my way out of a wet paper bag; instead, I post my exemplars on the smartboard, trace over them, and learn to form the letters at the same time as the students do. In about 30 years I should be able to handwrite. But that's a different story.
Here are links to the fonts.
printing trace font
handwriting trace fontAnd instructions to install them into your word program.
extract the tracefont files (.ttf)
open start menu
open control panel
open appearance and personalization
open fonts
drag these three files into the folder
When you open fonts in Word these will come up in the list. The trace fonts are a little hard to see in the list because they are broken lines, but click on them and your font will be a traceable letter in print or cursive.
If you do not have software to extract the files, it can be found
here.
