A Comparison between five and six year old grade 1 children regarding their readiness for acquiring handwriting skills

Abstract

This study evolved because of the researcher’s need to inquire whether visualmotor integration and fine motor coordination contribute to a child’s readiness to acquire handwriting skills. As school-going age is a controversial topic in the South- African context, the researcher set out to compare the readiness to acquire handwriting skills between two groups of Grade 1 children. This study was developed to determine whether a relationship existed between visual-motor integration and fine motor coordination as part of handwriting readiness, and acquiring handwriting skills in two age groups namely five-year-old children and six-year-old children. Initially the characteristics of the two age groups were determined. This was followed by establishing the level of development for visual-motor integration, fine motor coordination and handwriting skills in both age groups as well as comparing the levels of development. The abovementioned was obtained through the Miller Function and Participation Scales en the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment. Lastly, the scores for visual-motor integration and fine motor integration were correlated to the six categories of the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment. Both age groups presented with overall age appropriate abilities in visual-motor integration and fine motor coordination. The six-year-old group did better on all six of the categories for handwriting in the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment when compared to the five-year-old group. There was a significant difference (p=0.0049) between the visual-motor integration scores between the two age groups. No significant difference between the two age groups was recorded in fine motor coordination. A significant negative correlation was detected between visual-motor integration and the categories of legibility (r=-0.4029), form (r=-0.4300), size (r=-0.4087) and spacing (r=-0.3832) in the five-year-old group. The six-year-old group presented with a strong negative correlation between visual-motor integration and the category of rate (r=-0.3930). When correlating the fine motor coordination score with the categories of the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment, a strong negative correlation was detected with the categories of legibility (r=-0.3850) and spacing (r=-0.4697) in the five-yearold group. The six-year-old group did not present with significant correlations between fine motor coordination and the six categories of the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment. This study confirmed that a relationship exists between visual-motor integration, fine motor integration and handwriting skills. This relationship was not always clear and was influenced by different aspects such as age, maturity as well as the assessment instruments used. This study focused on only one district in Tshwane, which limited the data. The two age groups in this study were not matched for gender, ethnicity and handedness.