Handwriting: The Secret Foundation for Academic Success

Presented by Tania Ferrandino, National Presenter, Learning Without Tears; and Valerie Zaryczny, OTR/L, Learning Without Tears

Sponsored by Learning Without Tears

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Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation. Get a CE Certificate for this edWebinar Learn more

Today’s elementary classroom has students producing more written work than ever before. To succeed with all of their written assignments, students need to master the foundational skill of handwriting. Handwriting plays a significant role in students’ work, including journal work, note-taking, math worksheets, science labs, and spelling tests.

In this edWebinar, you will discover the three stages of learning for effective handwriting instruction, and how they can be applied to other academic subjects in the classroom. You will learn how to identify appropriate handwriting worksheets that will help organize your students and allow them to share their thoughts and ideas. Additionally, you will understand how to structure a handwriting lesson while actively participating in a carefully designed lesson. You will discover how to apply this lesson to engage young writers in all settings—whether in a classroom, virtual, or hybrid. Lastly, we will share some tips on how to encourage families to foster handwriting instruction in the home setting.

This edWebinar will be of interest to teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders of the PreK through elementary levels. 

About the Presenters

Tania Ferrandino graduated as an occupational therapist from her native England in 1992. She has practiced in multiple settings, but ultimately specialized in the school setting, working extensively with children of all ages and abilities. Tania’s passion is sharing with educators best practices for engaging and working with children to achieve written production success. Tania is employed by Learning Without Tears® as a Sr. professional learning producer.

Valerie received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest University and a Master of Science degree in Occupational Therapy from Washington University in St. Louis. She is a pediatric OT with experience across multiple settings including schools, clinics, early intervention, and teletherapy. She first attended a Handwriting Without Tears workshop in 2004 as a new therapist and has been in love with the products and methods ever since! After observing the success her students had with the curriculum, she became passionate about sharing the strategies with teachers and other therapists to empower them to help their students. This passion became a profession when Valerie became a National Workshop Presenter for Learning Without Tears in 2011.

Join the Building Blocks for PreK–5 community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming edWebinars, and view recordings of previous programs to earn CE certificates.

Learning Without Tears’ mission in today’s changing learning landscape is to ensure that the path to student success remains simple and fun. We provide child-friendly, hands-on, innovative instruction for early learning, handwriting, keyboarding, and writing strategies, and our programs reach more than 31 million students in Pre-K through fifth grade.