My initial interest in the field of motor development and handwriting stemmed from my experience as an infant teacher in St Vincent’s Infant Boys’ School, a DEIS Band 1 school in Dublin’s North Inner City. Here I taught in both a mainstream and SET capacity, working with children with a wide range of needs. It was during this time that I observed the key role that motor proficiency plays in the development of emergent handwriting skills. I was interested to find out if the apparent decline that I was noticing in relation to young children’s motor development was confined to my own context, or if it was a more universal issue. This led to the development of my first research questions – what is the baseline motor proficiency of junior infant children upon entry into school?
I subsequently measured the motor proficiency (gross motor, fine motor and visual-integration) skills of 178 Junior Infant children upon entry into school (2018-2019) using a standardised motor test of proficiency (the BOT-2). There were 6 participating schools and 10 participating class teachers in total, all located within the wider Dublin area (three DEIS schools, three non-DEIS schools). The findings that emerged from this initial testing phase showed that almost 50% (49%), of children from the DEIS schools had below average motor proficiency for their age upon entry into school. This was compared to 17% of children in the non-DEIS schools.
These findings provided a rationale for the need for a programme to address the motor skills and handwriting skills of junior infant children. Following a review of the literature, and informed by the statistical analysis of the data, I adapted the Sensorimotor Handwriting Programme (Keller, 2011). The ten participating teachers in the research implemented the programme over a 16-week period, before the standardised test was re-administered at the end of the school year. Post-implementation of the programme, the mean score of motor proficiency for all the participating children improved.
To provide context and depth to the quantitative findings, the ten participating teachers were also interviewed post-implementation of the programme. The findings from those interviews further informed the development of the programme, as revisions and amendments were made to the original programme, based on the insightful feedback from teachers.
Throughout the final two years of the doctoral journey, I was involved in delivering face-to-face and online summer courses for teachers. One of the topics that I included on the courses was the development of handwriting skills, and I shared the initial findings and programme outline with teachers who attended the course. One of those teachers happened to be involved in an educational publishing business and believed that the programme had the potential to be developed into a resource that would be useful for schools and teachers.
Under the careful guidance of my supervisors – Dr Órla Ní Bhroin and Dr Marie Flynn, I agreed that while this was an exciting opportunity, that I needed to complete the research first, before initiating any publication process. The publishers generously agreed to wait until the research was complete to begin discussions about how the programme might develop.
Two years later, I met with the publishers, and we discussed how the programme in its current form might be developed into a hands-on resource for schools. Working closely with an editor and designer, what was once a word document and some PowerPoint slides became a carefully thought-out, attractive and practical resource for classroom use.
The programme in its revised form focuses on the explicit teaching of gross motor, fine-motor and visual-perceptual skills as well as a focus on the explicit teaching of handwriting and letter formation.
The Move Write kit now includes several elements including a teacher manual, Gross Motor video clips, a Gross Motor Flipbook, Fine Motor Activity Cards and a Visual Skills Booklet. All of these elements were revised based on the statistical analysis of the standardised test results and on the recommendations from the participating teachers in the research. For example, teachers advised that while the images of the Gross Motor Skills were useful, video clips would be more effective. The Visual Skills Booklet emerged from teachers’ insights that the original visual-perceptual activities were the least engaging element of the programme, and the most challenging to teach. The revised Booklet then focused on presenting children with engaging visual-perceptual tasks, with explicit directions for teachers to facilitate.
The Move Write programme is now used in over 500 schools in Ireland, as well as a small number of schools in the UK and Belgium. Over 1000 teachers have attended summer courses and webinars which have focused on the underlying principles of handwriting instruction, and how best to use the Move Write programme in educational settings.
There have been six subsequent publications of handwriting workbooks since the original publication of Move Write in 2023. These include Move Write Book A (2024), Book B (2025) and Book C (2026) in Print and Cursive editions. Feedback from schools and teachers illustrates the impact of this research, with one teacher stating that ‘This is a fantastic programme. It’s very clearly laid out and was thoroughly enjoyed by the children. I’ve just completed parent teacher meetings for juniors and all the parents commented on the ‘exercise programme’ – it was a great hit.’
