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Practice Tracing to Improve Fine Motor and Visual Skills

Tags

ELA: Writing Elementary School Strategy

Skills

Fine Motor Skills Visual Motor Speed Spatial Perception

Practice Tracing to Improve Fine Motor and Visual Skills

If your student struggles with fine motor skills or spatial skills

How To Apply It!

  1. Tracing can be a great way to help students improve upon and build confidence in their fine and visual motor skills.
  2. Younger children can use tracing paper to learn and practice forming basic shapes and letters. Children will develop confidence when they pick up the tracing paper and see a correctly formed letter, even if it is still not perfect. As their muscles grow more accustomed to proper formation, they will have an easier time writing on their own.
  3. Since tracing paper can easily tear, particularly when trying to erase, be prepared that children with a lower patience threshold could get frustrated if they make a mistake.
  4. Many good handwriting apps off tracing options. The trade-off is that the student loses the important feel of pen or pencil to paper. Always choose a stylus for handwriting apps rather than allowing a child to use a finger to ensure a student is embedding the full feel of the handwriting in memory.
  5. Tracing paper can also help students of all ages gain confidence making complex drawings. With practice they will begin to understand most drawings as a manageable sequence of shapes. Depending on the complexity of what they trace, it also can help improve their attention and planning skills.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Handwriting and drawing is a physical and mental process. Some students need extra practice with the physical act of shape formation and developing a good sense of the spatial relationship of the lines. Tracing paper enables students to have extra practice with words or objects with the likelihood that they will have a successful outcome which can also add to self-confidence.