Did you know…
Teaching students how to automatically write letters leads to better quality writing. When children can form letters easily, they gain memory space to express more interesting ideas.
Practising letter shapes builds brain pathways for reading, helping students learn and remember letter patterns and words.
Handwriting builds confidence and motivation. When students are able to hand-write easily, they feel better about their writing and are more motivated to write.
Teaching handwriting is easy and fun. Students love it, and we can teach it effectively in just ten minutes a day.
So, teachers and teacher-leaders, please join us for The Great New Zealand Handwriting Challenge.
Our Goal
To make New Zealand famous for having the best handwriting programmes in the world.
To achieve this, we will need a community of advocates to:
Share the knowledge about the why, what, and how of teaching handwriting.
Keep informed about upcoming PLD opportunities for teaching handwriting.
Support the ‘20 week micro-challenge’
The micro-challenge
This is a student handwriting competition.
Teachers will share photos of their most-improved handwriting examples, before and after 20 weeks of teaching.
Student work that demonstrates strong progress will win that student a $100 koha, to share with their classmates, to host a class party.
This year’s micro-challenge entries are due at the end of the term 3 holidays.
Any photo from 2025 could become your ‘before teaching’ sample.
Please join us!
All of our work for the challenge is entirely voluntary. this is a labour of love.
We believe this is the single most important step we can take to address low rates of achievement in our beautiful country.
Thank you to the Tui Trust for sharing the vision and providing financial support for website development and marketing.
Thank you to Staedtler for helping to spread the word.
Information to share with your colleagues:
Teaching handwriting
Why?
What?
How?
Enter your email to subscribe to our mailing list and to enter the micro-challenge. In late Term 3, you will receive an email with details about how to upload your challenge photos. Encourage colleagues to join TGNZHC too - to transform learning for students across the nation!
Register your team for an online handwriting workshop - entirely free of charge. We have 6 after-school sessions scheduled for the first half of 2024.
Join our Facebook group to share information and resources, to stay informed about upcoming events, and to stay connected with the TGNZHC community.
The Handwriting Challenge was initiated by Drs Helen Walls and Christine Braid, for whom this is a labour of love - with no income received. Website development and other marketing strategies have been made possible with funding from the Tui Trust. Staedtler support the challenge by publicising key messages with their customers.
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Dr Helen Walls is a professional learning facilitator and educational researcher, with twenty years’ experience working in schools. She is committed to raising achievement in writing by sharing evidence-based, practical methods that will engage every student. Helen is Managing Director of The Writing Teacher - a consultancy which provides writing workshops and resources for teachers, all accessible online. She also works in schools as a professional learning facilitator. For her PhD thesis, Helen conducted two empirical studies into the teaching of writing. The first was a trial of the Fast Feedback Formative Evaluation System. The second was a survey of teachers’ beliefs and practices, and an investigation of the impacts of these on student achievement. She has published with The Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties and The Education Hub.
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Christine is an educator with both practical and research experience. She was a classroom teacher for 12 years and has been involved in teacher education with Massey University for over 20 years. Christine leads the Tātai Angitu Literacy team and works across Aotearoa New Zealand to support teachers in implementing practice that improves outcomes for learners. Along with teaching qualifications, Christine has completed a Diploma of Children’s Literature, a MEd focused on using picture books for discussion, and a PhD focused on the explicit approach for teaching reading. She is pleased to have worked with Dr Helen Walls for the book Teaching writing, spelling, and grammar.
STAEDTLER NZ Ltd is committed to supporting child development in handwriting and is extremely proud to be a key sponsor of ‘The Great New Zealand Writing Challenge’.
Supporting ‘The Great New Zealand Writing Challenge’ allows us to be at the forefront of the students early development and to support the wonderful work the organisation does to promote the importance of handwriting from an early age.
We have been deeply involved with New Zealand’s education sector since 1956 and are proud to connect with teachers and students to help make a measurable difference by providing products that aids development in their ongoing learning.