The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation & Resources
Hosted by Dr. Lisa Hassler, The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation, & Resources a podcast that offers innovative solutions for education challenges. We bring together research, expert insights, and practical resources to help teachers and parents tackle everything from classroom management to learning differences. Every episode focuses on turning common education challenges into opportunities for growth. Whether you're a teacher looking for fresh ideas or a parents wanting to better support your child's learning, we've got actionable strategies you can use right away.
The podcast's music was created by Brandon Picciolini from The Lonesome Family Band. You can explore more of his work on Instagram.
The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation & Resources
Handwriting Instruction: How it Boosts Literacy & Brain Development| Holly Britton
Discover why handwriting instruction is disappearing from classrooms and how this impacts your child's literacy development. In this research-backed episode, handwriting specialist Holly Britton reveals the neuroscience behind why forming letters by hand activates crucial brain pathways that typing cannot replicate.
What You'll Learn:
- Why explicit handwriting instruction is missing from most schools and its impact on reading comprehension
- The kinesthetic connection between hand movement and language acquisition in the brain
- Evidence-based strategies for teaching proper letter formation and pencil grip
- How to support children struggling with handwriting difficulties and learning differences
- Whether cursive writing still matters in digital education
- Practical tools and techniques that make handwriting easier for young learners
- What happens when handwriting instruction is delayed or skipped entirely
Key Research Discussed: Studies from Indiana University, University of Washington, and Frontiers in Psychology demonstrate that students who practice handwriting show stronger neural activation for reading and language, write more words, express more ideas, and develop better fine motor skills than those who rely solely on keyboards.
Guest Expert: Holly Britton, M.Ed., is founder of the Squiggle Squad Method, a research-based handwriting program used in schools across the United States. With 25+ years in education, Holly bridges the gap between educational neuroscience and practical classroom application.
Perfect for: Elementary teachers, parents of young children, homeschoolers, special education professionals, and anyone interested in literacy development and brain-based learning strategies.
Resources Mentioned:
- SquiggleSquad.com - Free name worksheet generator
- Contact: holly@squigglesquad.com
- Research by Karin James (Indiana University)
- Virginia Berninger's handwriting studies (University of Washington)
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Sponsored by Dr. Gregg Hassler Jr., DMD
Trusted dental care for healthy smiles and stronger communities—building brighter futures daily.
If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, email me at lisa@drlisahassler.com or visit www.drlisahassler.com. Subscribe, tell a friend, and consider becoming a supporter by clicking the link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/support.
The music in this podcast was written and performed by Brandon Picciolini of the Lonesome Family Band. Visit and follow him on Instagram.
In a world where keyboards rule the classroom, have we forgotten one of the simplest yet most powerful tools for learning? Today, we'll explore how handwriting shapes the brain, boosts literacy and may just hold the key to unlocking every child's full potential. Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation and resources. I'm your host, dr Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:In an era where tablets and keyboards dominate classrooms, handwriting instruction is quietly disappearing from many early education programs. Yet research shows that writing by hand is far more than an old-fashioned skill. It's a powerful driver of literacy, comprehension and brain development. A landmark study by Karen James at Indiana University found that forming letters by hand activates neural pathways for reading and language in ways that typing does not. Similarly, virginia Berninger's 2012 University of Washington study revealed that students who practiced handwriting wrote more words, expressed more ideas and wrote faster than peers using keyboards. The motion of shaping each letter strengthens memory for language, aiding spelling, reading, fluency and comprehension. A 2020 Frontiers in Psychology review further showed that explicit handwriting instruction supports fine motor skills, attention, working memory and academic confidence.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Without it, children often face lasting challenges in reading, writing and self-expression. One form of handwriting, cursive, has largely vanished from schools since the Common Core Standards of 2010, but research shows it engages the brain differently from print, can improve fluency and comprehension, and may help students with dyslexia avoid common letter reversals. Beyond the cognitive benefits, cursive can be highly motivating, giving children a sense of accomplishment and pride when mastered. To help us understand why this matters and how to address it, we're joined by handwriting instruction specialist Holly Britton. As the founder of Squiggle Squad Method, she has spent over 25 years helping children, parents and educators strengthen the connection between hand and brain to boost literacy and learning. Her approach, grounded in educational neuroscience, offers practical strategies that empower both teachers and students. Holly, welcome to the Brighter Side of Education, thank you so nice to be here.
Holly Britton :What brought you on the path to handwriting? Having children got me into education and, unexpectedly in homeschooling. Later I just got so into teaching and education, ended up going into private school and public schools. All of that introduced me to aspects of handwriting across various institutions and how it was being addressed in the nation. I saw a huge gap and a lot of misunderstanding about how it affects learning. As we have watched handwriting fade into the background. We're also seeing spiraling literacy rates and just wonder if they couldn't be somewhat related.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:So, squigglesquat, when did you start this and how did it begin?
Holly Britton :I tried some of the methodologies when I was coaching kinder was seeing that teachers coming into the profession had not been trained in how to teach children to handwrite at really young ages. So you're starting at four, five and and six years old and they jump right into writing as a way of expressing yourself without any of the base skill building that was necessary at a very young age. So I went in trying to troubleshoot that and found out that the closer I got to their developmentally appropriate modalities, the better success we had with handwriting, namely allowing kids to move and using movement as a way of honing the coordination and dexterity skills that they would need to write letters by hand. Fast forward, I was watching kids from different backgrounds in mid to higher elementary levels and realizing that we're missing foundational skills.
Holly Britton :There's so much research out there. It's not for lack of research or misunderstanding about handwriting in literacy, it's that that information is stuck in the books and has not yet reached the classrooms. So I wanted to be that bridge between what we know to be true in research and what we're practicing in the classroom, and Squiggle Squad was born. My daughter is my co-founder. She is a graphic designer and we are about five years into it, we are now in schools across the United States.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:What do you think is missing in handwriting instruction as it stands today? What kind of gaps have you seen and how do you see it show up in other aspects of students learning?
Holly Britton :Not to be too cavalier about this, but we're actually missing handwriting instruction. Yeah, it's not being explicitly taught and it's not being championed as a tool for literacy learning. It's been pushed to a back table, if at all. It's been expected that the kids will just pick it up as they go. We show them a symbol that we call a letter and we expect them to make it, as if they know how to form it correctly. So effectively they are drawing shapes. So there's no efficiency. There's no attention to sizing or spacing, to baseline and capital versus lowercase. All of that affects legibility and if it's too hard for a child to do, they're not going to want to do it. And instead of teaching them how to do it and showing them properly and then giving them the practice to do it, the teacher simply sees the messy writing and says I know you can do better, go change that. And they send it back without any instruction to that kid and the kid's going okay.
Holly Britton :So how does a child make it better? They go slower, they think more about the writing than the concepts they are writing. So we've now taken them away from higher level learning back to foundational skill practice, that window of opportunity for affecting handwriting to make it efficient and legible and automatic happens at the lower grades. I mean they're just not addressing handwriting at all past first and second grade. Once you get past that, the muscle memory takes over and you write the way you write, and changing it is nearly impossible, especially if it's never addressed.
Holly Britton :So what Squiggle Squad does is separates the motor skill from the letter learning, so that we are practicing physical and we're practicing cognitive. And when the child is ready to meet the two, then they can put a pencil in their hand and try tracing letters with a finger and they're learning directionality. They're learning the symbols needed to understand handwriting instruction, because if you give kids dotted lines with a dot and an arrow and tell them to practice, they will ignore those dots and arrows. I've sat in kindergarten classes where the teacher gives them a book and, by the way, the book is very fat and their hands are very little so they can't hold down the binding while they practice their writing and I sit at that table and I watch those kids practicing. They're struggling the entire time and they're writing. However, they want bottom to top, clockwise instead of counterclockwise, so the kid believes that's the way you're supposed to do it, and the results are felt all the way up the academic pipeline.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:We have a lot of focus on getting the content in, and so handwriting, when it comes to the language arts block, diminishes because you're trying to get in all those other skills.
Holly Britton :When we compartmentalize handwriting, especially at the early years, where we push it into a block and we say we're going to practice handwriting now, now we're going to leave it and do social studies, where I'm going to have you write about your family, but there's no attention paid to the way that they write in their social studies block, then you are reinforcing bad habits over good habits, because the less time you spend in that handwriting block, the more time you need to give them practice doing it correctly.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Little ones have those tiny little hands. What do you think is like best to start off material?
Holly Britton :wise. So this is a great question. We should understand why we use the writing implements we use. I like to say don't start a habit you have to break If a child can let them.
Holly Britton :If a child at the age of four can hold a standard size pencil and form letters with little effort, there's no reason for me to go to a small pencil or a fat pencil or even a crayon, though it does help hand strength a lot to use fatter, smaller things.
Holly Britton :You can use those as tools for developing the skills that they need the strength, the coordination, the dexterity. If they struggle with dexterity and they can't pinch their fingers around a small pencil, then give them a fatter pencil. If their hand's very small and they're having a problem controlling the top part of the pencil, their hand's very small and they're having a problem controlling the top part of the pencil because it's too long and unwieldy, then give them a short pencil so that they don't have to worry about that extra length. But as soon as they can and you do start seeing a tripod or a quad and hold, then just give them a regular pencil and you can make a big deal of it. The same would go for pencil grips. Maybe their problem is holding three, so you need a level three hold, one that you can do. And maybe it's that they they are using their wrist too much, in which case you would choose a different one that maybe gives them a little bit of of cushion. The reasons why you're giving them what you're giving them.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:You talked about motions and the movement of the strokes. That kinesthetic connection Do you want to elaborate on when it comes to handwriting and how that motion of writing then shapes the language pathways in the brain?
Holly Britton :Yeah, this is the part that's really exciting when it comes to language acquisition and literacy learning. So we learn first about the written word through our eyes and our ears and eventually what we pronounce. So all of that is coming fairly naturally and then acquired, more so when a child is read to seeing print in front of them, and then slowly they begin to make that association with the squiggles they see in a book or on paper, to the sounds that they're hearing from the mouth of an adult reading. To them that's just super, super slow and we call it print emergence. So they don't fully understand the symbolism behind all of it or the decoding part of it. So that's where phonics comes in. We start to show them the shape on the page that's called a, b, and we start telling them the sound it makes is B. So now we want them to be able to reproduce sound. We call that encoding. So they're decoding one way. Now we want them to write it, which is encoding. That's the next step. And we want them to do it in a way that when they start putting them together, the movement is efficient, because the end goal of handwriting is quick, efficient, automatic and legible writing, and that needs to seem super natural. So in order to make it feel natural, we need to tuck it into long-term memory and we do that in part kinesthetically. We write the letter on the page, which reinforces the different regions of the brain that is trying to understand language, that is trying to make a connection between what they're seeing and the cognitive processes necessary to come to that light bulb moment that says oh, I get it.
Holly Britton :Kinesthetic movement has been shown in many, many aspects, not just handwriting, to help solidify learning in a young child especially.
Holly Britton :So when we do things we imprint them better into our brain. So when they are physically ready to hold a pencil and make movement, then we can start using the kinesthetic connection to help them understand how language is used on paper. And what handwriting instructors should be aware of is that when you're teaching a child a letter, you in your mind know that that letter is going to attach to another letter. It's going to attach to another letter. It's going to become a word and a sentence and a paragraph. So even though a child doesn't understand that, it's really important that the efficiency of that first letter is such that they're set up for the next letter and the next letter, because in the end, we want that hand to flow so that it can be used as a tool for thinking, learning and communicating. And if our hand doesn't flow, then our thoughts can't flow. We need it to be so automatic that we can think about what we're thinking and not about how we get it on paper.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:There's ownership when it comes to writing. If you've created a paper and you write it handwriting first your summary, your outline, your ideas you have more ownership. It stays in your memory for recall longer, better.
Holly Britton :I think that teachers of young children need to know that they're giving them a tool for the rest of their life. It accesses a part of your brain that nothing else can access. So we know people. When they need to think deeper, they go to handwriting. They say that handwriting mastery doesn't happen until sometimes in the middle school grades and sometimes higher. What?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:kind of tips do you have for teachers or parents whose child may be struggling with legible handwriting?
Holly Britton :Broadly speaking, the best thing that you can do for a child is to evaluate the issue at hand, whether it's legibility or sizing or directionality. Start big and get smaller by doing large muscle movement, making those stroke movements in the air, tracing them large on big pieces of paper, get them coordinating their eye and their hand with a little bit of guidance, and allow that physical movement to happen before you're asking them to reproduce it from memory. And then you start to shrink everything in from the sides and bring it down to the hand-on pencil. Once you get to writing letters you don't want to write too big because you start drawing that letter instead of writing it like a letter. So we do want to play with those sizings a little bit. Make sure that the directionality is not an issue for that kiddo.
Holly Britton :More times than not it is Top to bottom and clockwise circles are the most common, but it's also excessive pencil lifts. Like you get one letter that doesn't have to have a pencil lift at all and they might lift their pencil twice to make that one letter. Go back to the traditional formation of lowercase letters and get that flow as best you can. And again, if it has to start big and get small, then do that and bring them up incrementally. What about sandpaper?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:letters, shaving cream I always loved the shaving cream. Yes, we did shaving cream and chalk as well. I taught Montessori their sandpaper letters were always very nice. The kids seemed to really enjoy the texture of it. What about like lefties?
Holly Britton :If we are trying to teach letter formation, doing it in interesting ways, it doesn't matter if it's sandpaper or chalk or shaving cream.
Holly Britton :You are getting them to move their muscles in the direction you want them to move their muscles. So you're still improving muscle memory in the direction associated with handwriting or letter formation strokes.
Holly Britton :I do have a lefty, and when I asked him about designing a handwriting program for lefties specifically, I said is there anything that you would recommend that I design into this program that would have helped you as a lefty? And he said well, mom, just the first thing is don't let them write over the top of their hand. So you know how lefties sometimes will hook their hand over the top of their fingers in order to sort of pull the pencil across, ostensibly to keep it from smudging. But what I have seen is it has more to do with the push-pull aspect of writing, because they somehow have figured out that that pushing across motion is easier for them than to get underneath and pull it across. In the end, what our end objective is is that they have this automatic, efficient writing, but also comfortable. We don't want to cause any kind of carpal tunnel or pressure. We want to build up longevity in a way that they can sustain it over the course of their lifetime without hurting themselves.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:I have a left-handed son and he definitely did the hook over and was always very annoyed with like spirally on the left, and when you were talking about having to push down and hold down a book while writing, it became very hard. As righties too. It depends on, I guess, which side of the book you're writing on. So I didn't know if there was like any sort of strokes or strategies that you knew that would maybe help out those lefties. Yeah.
Holly Britton :They basically write the same way. It's just that the movement is a push or a pull versus, you know, depending on the formation of each letter. In our program we specifically have booklets that lay flat, so that you don't have to worry about that binding as you're learning how to form letters, do you?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:think hand strength has become an issue for poor handwriting. When I was teaching, I would give them putties of different strengths that they would twist and pull and I would hide things inside there. So they would have to pull it and we would go from a softer putty to a tougher one and that strength in their hands I didn't know if that was ever an issue that you had come across or had any advice for. Did they like those activities?
Holly Britton :Oh, they loved it. Yes, yeah, that's what I found too, that they actually enjoyed that. I think this problem is getting worse and in the three years I've been in classrooms doing this with many children, I have absolutely seen the lack of hand strength and I think that those kinds of things that you're doing are awesome. I also think parents just need to get those kids outside climbing monkey bars and doing things that actually strengthen their hands and not use handwriting to strengthen their hand. Use those outside activities and even Lego building and putty manipulation, play-doh sorting, pinching. Those activities absolutely contribute to a child's ability to write by hand.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:A lot of schools have stopped teaching cursive, but I found that the kids in my classroom were so excited to learn it. They wanted to learn it. It was like a sign of them being grown up, and so when they were done learning the lower and the uppercase and they wanted to get quills, it was exciting for them. So what are your thoughts on cursive?
Holly Britton :In the past it was an art form, because handwriting was used in all of our business negotiations and personal interactions. How you wrote and the way it looked was a reflection on your education and your intellect. It's not so much that anymore, but what it is really important for is speed and efficiency. So there are some people like myself who continue to use print, but because I know cursive, I will do a hybrid of the two for efficient handwriting. That is okay. However, a child will never use that or come to that if they're never taught that. So again, we are depriving them of a possible useful tool for their life if we don't give them that option. I used to have girls stay in at lunch in my classroom because the school didn't teach cursive. But they knew that I knew cursive and they wanted me to teach them. Once they have the print in proper direction, adding that little ligature is just not difficult. Then it is like their eyes are open.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:They're like it's not a mystery what happens when handwriting is not addressed in the child's early years?
Holly Britton :Motor memory sinks in and it becomes almost impossible to change it later. Memory sinks in and it becomes almost impossible to change it later, unless you get real buy-in from an older student that wants to get better at get faster or more efficient or make handwriting more easier for him or herself. It's really really ingrained in the muscle memory. It's very hard to change without deliberate, intentional, focused instruction.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:I've even seen where they completely avoided it at all costs. It's very laborious and they know that it doesn't look good If they're exchanging papers with their peers. You know, as they get older and someone is like, well, I'm supposed to read your work to be able to grade it like a pair thing and I can't read it, and so that doesn't feel good.
Holly Britton :Not only the kids avoid it, but when it's laborious for the kids, the teachers avoid it. The more the teachers avoid it, the less the kids are going to learn. There's a recent article in the New York Times about college professors needing to go back to Blue Book because of AI cheating that's happening are having a hard time doing that because the kids can't write by hand. It affects them all the way up the academic pipeline.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:What would you hope parents, teachers and schools consider when it comes to handwriting instruction?
Holly Britton :It needs to be addressed early and it needs to be addressed well. Handwriting instruction matters to young children. Breaking it down into incremental pieces is super, super important and if you do that and it remains easy for students, then as you increase the challenge, they're up for it because they have experienced the intrinsic reward of being able to do it. Once that window closes, it's very hard to get it back.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:So where can parents or teachers go to be able to access your resources and the Squiggle Squad program?
Holly Britton :Yeah, pretty easy. Just find me at squigglesquadcom. Any contact form on there will reach me personally. Or you can reach me at holly at squigglesquadcom. Any contact form on there will reach me personally or you can reach me at holly at squigglesquadcom. I'd love for your listeners to know about our free name worksheet generator. That's on the homepage of the website. They can go on there, put their kiddos' names in the form and it'll print out Squiggle Squad style their name. On guidelines to help kids learn the capital letter at the first of their name. On guidelines to help kids learn the capital letter at the first of their name and the lowercase letters to follow.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:Oh, that's wonderful and perfect timing for the beginning of the year, when teachers are definitely running those off and making sure that they are learning how to write their name properly and well. Thank you so much for sharing what you're doing with Squiggle Squad, your insights on handwriting, how it connects to language, and your different strategies. I think that it's something that we don't talk enough about, and so I'm really excited that you came on to talk about it with us. So thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:I encourage you to look at how handwriting is taught, or not taught, in your classroom or home. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom, or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.
