What the scores mean

This is the chapter worth reading properly. A teacher knows that a badly written letter can be badly written in three different ways, each needing a different response. Most parents have never been taught that, and it is why "try harder" is the usual answer and the wrong one.

Three things are measured, not one

Every attempt is scored on three separate things.

The score you see is those three together. Two children can both get 61 for completely opposite reasons.

You can see all three on the progress page.

The three patterns, and what to do about each

Good shape, poor placement

Accuracy is high, placement is low. The letter is well made and floating above the line, sitting below it, or growing across the row.

This is not a formation problem, and going back to the demonstration will not help. They already know how to make the letter.

What to do: talk about letter heights, which is its own chapter, and then have them write four letters slowly, checking each one against the line before starting the next. The dotted middle line on the screen is the target for most lowercase letters, and children routinely ignore it because nobody has told them what it is for.

Good placement, poor shape

Placement is high, accuracy is low. They are writing neatly on the line, and forming the letter wrongly: starting in the wrong place, going the wrong way round an oval, or lifting the pen where cursive does not lift.

This is the one to take seriously. A wrongly formed letter written neatly gets worse with practice, not better, because every repetition drills the error deeper.

What to do: stop. Go back to ▶ Watch Demo, set the speed to slow, and watch it together while you say the movement out loud. Then have them trace it, then write one. Not five. One.

Everything low

Look at the tool before you look at the child. A mouse produces poor handwriting from a competent adult. A finger on a tablet is better than a mouse and worse than a stylus.

If the tool is fine and everything is still low, drop back a letter to one they have already passed and let them succeed at something. A child who is failing everything has usually stopped trying to write and started trying to survive the screen.

The number that is not on the screen

How tired their hand is. Handwriting is a physical skill. Watch for scores that start well and slide across a session, because that is a hand that is done, not a child who has stopped caring. Stop and come back tomorrow.

Reading the sequence, not the average

On the progress page you can see the individual attempts. The order tells you more than the average does.

• 42 · 51 · 63 · 70 · 78 is a child learning in front of you. Say so.
• 71 · 44 · 80 · 39 · 76 is a child whose attention is coming and going. Same average, completely different conversation, and the answer is usually a shorter session rather than more practice.

What the score is not

It is not a judgment of your child, and it is not a prediction. It measures how one letter was formed on one attempt. It cannot see that they were rushing to get to something else, or that they were proud of the one before.

You can see that. The program cannot. That is why you are reading this and it is not writing to you.