The effectiveness of the WHAM handwriting intervention for second to fifth grade students

Handwriting is an essential skill for school assignments and projects. Elementary school students spend up to 50% of the school day engaged in paper and pencil tasks. Occupational therapists assist children to overcome handwriting difficulties through varied intervention approaches and techniques. The purpose of this retrospective study was to examine the effectiveness of a handwriting program for 2nd to 5th grade students based on motor learning principles of feedback, practice, and task relevance. Thirty students' handwriting samples were examined. The handwriting quality was analyzed using a modified scale based on the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment . The results showed significant improvement between pre and post for all measures of legibility, form, alignment, size and spacing.