1. Provide a slanted handwriting manuscript in which most letters are formed with a single continuous stroke which makes it easy for students to trace.
2. The unique D’Nealian handwriting manuscript alphabet is easy to learn and the transition to cursive writing comes naturally.
3. D’Nealian handwriting fonts can make letters with a similar starting point and beginning strokes are taught in families to simplify letter formation.
4. D’Nealian style fonts can make letters are formed with a continuous stroke so there are few pencil lifts and better legibility.
5. With D’Nealian handwriting manuscripts common reversals are minimized with different starting points for letters such as b and d.
6. With D’Nealian handwriting, transition from manuscript to cursive has only 3 simple connecting strokes.
7. Using D’Nealian handwriting fonts, students will have made the transition to cursive with ease by the end of second grade.

Ramon Abajo, Handwriting Expert & Teacher of the Year

Downhill Publishing LLC

1 Grade.

Handwriting: D’Nealian handwriting—correctly forms letters and numerals. Writes neatly using guidelines/correct spacing.

Writing Process: Writes complete sentence, simple story, paragraph using four basic styles. Revises/edits drafts for spelling/punctuation/capitalization. Researches/writes about given subject. Writes simple book report, friendly letter, entries in a journal. 6 + 1 Traits of Writing.

2 Grade.

Handwriting: D’Nealian handwriting—letter and numeral formation (manuscript).

Writing Process: Creative writing, poetry, letter writing, book reports, and journal writing. One-topic research paper with simple note-taking. Expository writing. Persuasive writing. Voice in writing. 6 + 1 Traits of Writing.

3 Grade.

Handwriting: D’Nealian handwriting—refine cursive writing skills.

Writing Process: Write a paragraph. Write a story. Research—two sources. Note-taking. Poetry. D.E.A.R. Diary. 6+1 Traits of Writing.

 4 Grade.

Handwriting: D’Nealian handwriting—continue cursive writing skills. Letter writing.

Writing Process: Pre-writing (brainstorming, webbing, mapping), first draft (revising, editing), final draft (sharing). Creative writing. Opinion writing (critiques of others’ work). Journal writing. Reflective writing of novels read. Essays for Create-A-Country Exhibition. Research: multiple resources, outlining, note-taking, bibliography. 6 + 1 Traits…

Heathwood Hall Episcopal School

For many years, South Dakota schoolchildren learned to write using the Palmer method of handwriting. It was developed by A.N. Palmer during the late 1800s, and was used in schools well into the 20th century. Palmer believed that writers should use the muscles in the arms and not just hand muscles to write. In Palmer handwriting, hand muscles held onto the pen while the arm muscles glided the pen smoothly across the paper. With practice, this produced a pleasant cursive style that flowed easily from word to word. Almost every handwriting method used today is a direct descendent of the Palmer method.

The Zaner-Bloser handwriting method is based on the older Palmer method with some improvements. In 1904, Zaner-Bloser published The Zaner Method of Arm Movement. The text incorporated into handwriting the knowledge that young children did better at manual tasks like handwriting if they could use the large arm movements that were natural to them in the early stage of motor skills development.

Don Neal Thurber developed the D’Nealian handwriting fonts method in the 1960s. He sought to make it easier to transition from manuscript (printing) to cursive writing. Using the D’Nealian method, users keep their pencil on the paper much more than they do when forming letters in circle-and-stick printing. The smooth flow of printing the D’Nealian letters makes the move to cursive writing, where all the letters are connected to each other, easier.

One-Room Schoolhouse Learning

South Dakota State Historical Society Education Kit

 Special Needs Students and D’Nealian Handwriting

Special Needs (Auditory Deficits) Use visual support with these group of students. First tell them to make a bulletin board with a section for books and another for poems. Each student should make a jacket for his favorite book and write a poem.  Mount and label book jackets and poems.  Underline book titles with fluorescent string. Put poem titles in quotation marks of foam paint. Teacher can help students more at risk by creating worksheets with D’Nealian fonts. Write the poem with D’Nealian fonts and students can trace it. Or you can use dots, or lines, too.

Special Needs (Visual Deficits) Show students how to draw giant punctuation marks in the air.  Pantomime writing and apostrophe and quotation marks high in the air; a period and a comma near the floor; and a question mark and an exclamation mark beginning high and ending near the floor. Have children in pairs name the mark as their partner pantomimes it.

Special Needs (Attention Deficit Disorder) These students function best with the aid if an external time structure.  Have one of them copy the class schedule for a day on the chalkboard, with columns labeled Time and Activity. Throughout the day, call on students to check off what has been completed and tell what is coming next.

Original idea from D’nealian Handwriting – Scott Foresman/Addison Wesley

Setting up a Writing Center

As D’Nealian handwriting is being formally taught, students will increase their fine-motor control and fluency through purposeful writing.  Interesting choices of independent activities, provided in the classroom Writing Center, will also lead children to regard writing as natural and pleasant.

Materials for the Writing Center

• Writer’s mascot
• Paper and writing tools
• D’Nealian Fonts to make worksheets
• Dictionaries and Thesauri
• Publishing box and materials
• Porftolio file

Original idea from Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley

The D’Nealian Handwriting Fonts Dilemma

D'Nealian Fonts

It is not unusual for any teacher at the elementary level to receive new students during the year.  Children will transfer from schools in the area, different states or another country.   It is not unusual to find that some of those students are not familiar with D’Nealian Handwriting.  If those students are doing a poor job with a different handwriting method, we strongly encourage teachers to teach D’Nealian Handwriting.  It is simple and particularly useful for those children who are lagging behind with different methods. 

If, for any reason, those students continue with their old manuscript handwriting method instead of being introduced to the D’Nealian Handwriting, it is advisable to assign extra help making the transition to cursive, which in D’Nealian Programs is taught at grade two.  There are reasons to believe that these young kids haven’t had the chance to practice enough form, size, slant, and rhythm necessary for cursive writing.

We strongly recommend Fonts 4 Teachers.  A program that contains 6 different D’Nealian Fonts that make D’Nealian practice easy and fun.  You can customize worksheets tailored to students needs.  You can create worksheets with arrows, dots, lines and/or pictures.  Or a combination of all of the them.

Please, share with us your experiences with D’Nealian Handwriting, and/or, if you are familiar with Fonts 4 Teachers, your experiences with this award winning software.

Ramon Abajo, Handwriting Expert & Teacher of the Year

Downhill Publishing LLC

D’Nealian Fonts

D'Nealian Fonts

Start handwriting instruction in the early grades by giving each student a D’Nealian model of his or her name by using Downhill Publishing’s D’Nealian Fonts.  Use the most appropriate paper and place name tags on their desk.  A handwriting center is needed.

Once you have the center established, students can start practicing with the D’Nealian Fonts family.  These include:

• ABC DN Manus Manuscript
• ABC DN Manus Dotted
• ABC DN Manus Dotted Lined
• ABC DN Manus Lined
• ABC DN Manus Arrow
• ABC DN Manus Arrow Dotted

You can create hundreds of worksheets with these 6 awesome D’Nealian Fonts.  And you can incorporate variations, including dots, arrows or lines or a combination of all of the them.  Besides, you can include pictures.

Ramon Abajo, Handwriting Expert & Teacher of the Year

Downhill Publishing LLC

When teaching handwriting there are questions that need to be answered before choosing the method of instruction: is it better to teach Traditional Handwriting letter forms, or is it better to teach using the slanted alphabets? Good samples of Traditional (also called Manuscript, Print, or Vertical alphabet) are Zanner-Bloser©, Palmer, A Reason For Handriting© McDougal-Littell© and Harcourt Brace©. Samples of slanted alphabets (also called Italic) are D’Nealian© and Betty-Dubay©. Other programs are Abeka©, Peterson Directed© and Handwriting Without Tears©.

What are the differences and how do these differences affect children when learning to write? The debate on vertical versus slanted handwriting instruction has gone on since slanted handwriting instruction first begun in 1968. There are no easy answers to the questions of which alphabet is easier to read, is easier to write, easier to teach or which alphabet leads on more easily to the transition to cursive. There are many different styles of handwriting, but with Downhill Publishing LLC Handwriting Worksheets 4 Teachers we have focused on two of them: Traditional Print and D’Nealian Fonts, without getting involved in the debate. We have developed hundreds of activity sheets in both styles. You are free to choose the option which is most appropriate to your needs.

To gain a better understanding of the differences and correlation between Traditional Print & Cursive on the one hand, and D’Nealian-Print & D’Nealian-Cursive on the other we have to examine the two alphabets.

The popularity of the Traditional Handwriting (Manuscript) alphabet is due to the fact that it can easily be learnt by initial learners. Letters look more like the typeface letters found in books, on children’s TV programs, signs, highways and other public places. Children can easily recognize them. Letters are composed of only 4 single strokes:

Vertical lines
Horizontal lines
Diagonal lines
Circles and semicircles

Detractors of this method of instruction say that vertical, horizontal and round strokes are difficult for most children to learn, and, what is even worse, by third grade the students have to completely abandon this method and start learning an entirely different system-Cursive writing. In the Cursive writing alphabet, letters are connected to form words; letters are slanted, each starting from the guide-line or the baseline. There are very few reversible letters. Cursive writing gives words a rhythmic flow. It is more complex for beginners but, paradoxically, cursive writing has advantages of print for students with dysgraphia. The D’Nealian handwriting alphabet was designed by teacher Don Neal Thurber and is named after him. His idea was to create an alphabet similar to cursive. In fact, it was seen as a kind of bridge between traditional print and cursive. D’Nealian uses unconnected letter forms like traditional manuscript, but its letter forms are slanted, like in cursive, and it uses continuous strokes. The idea behind the D’Nealian handwriting practice was for children to learn a simple, slanted alphabet, with continuous strokes. Being similar to cursive, students would not be required to learn two completely different alphabets.

Given this reasoning, the teaching of a slanted alphabet such as D’Nealian Fonts would appear to be the option of choice, but even though they were designed in such a way as to make the transition to cursive both quick and easy, the slanted styles still have many opponents. After several years of use in some schools, research has found amazing answers to some significant questions in the ongoing debate of vertical versus slanted styles. Studies by (Graham 1992), (Kuhl and Dewitz 1994), (Hakcney 1991) and (Berninger and Graham) make a more detailed examination in terms of the ease of transition and the degree of student satisfaction. Here are two amazing conclusions from a study carried out by Berninger and Graham***:

1. Children who use a mixed style of writing, i.e. using elements from both Print and D’Nealian alphabets, wrote as legibly as or more legibly than students who wrote in only one style.

2. Both alphabets function well but the idea that “Print is Print and D’Nealian Fonts are D’Nealian Fonts, and never the twain shall meet” appears to be false. Mixed writing has superior results in terms of speed and at least equal results in terms of legibility.

***(Check Berninger and Graham research link at the end of this section for more information.)

Ramón Abajo, Downhill Publishing LLC CEO /Founder
Diego Uribe Ph.D Chief Marketing Officer

www.Fonts4Teachers.com