If you think handwriting isn't that important consider that last September an oil company pumped 100 gallons of oil into the basement of a Queens, New York home that didn't have an oil tank. The driver got the wrong house because he couldn't decipher an address scribbled on a piece of paper.

Julie Urvine Farnsworth said poor handwriting is a growing problem with young people today.

That is why she decided to introduce a pilot programme at Victor Scott Primary.

The Royal Gazette recently visited the primary two classroom at Victor Scott taught by Alfred Benson. Mrs. Farnsworth comes in once a week to work with the students, and Mr. Benson carries on the lessons the rest of the week. It fits into their literacy block.

"I am an occupational therapist and I was getting lots of referrals for kids who were struggling with handwriting," Mrs. Farnsworth said. "I had been on a course to bring in a handwriting curriculum that is developmentally appropriate. It teaches in line with a child's motor, visual and cognitive development."

Although handwriting may sound like a minor thing, it can be crucial to a child's overall success in school.

"Some people have asked if handwriting is even important these days," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "Research shows that until primary four, about 85 percent of tasks are pen and paper. So it is really important to learn the basics."

She said children who learn bad techniques when writing, holding the pencil wrong, for example, may have a hard time keeping up in school.

"It slows their handwriting up and they can't keep up because of poor formation," she said. "So they have to compensate. They might be good at the computer, or they might want to give all their stories orally.

"But if they were going to go straight into typing their hands wouldn't be strong enough."

Part of the problem, she felt, was that more traditional handwriting programmes often ignored the developmental milestones. For example, the traditional programmes sometimes offer kids example letters with a lot of curls and swirls, which are often too cumbersome.

They also sometimes use a dashed line across the page to guide the child, but the dashed line can confuse children, particularly children with learning challenges, or visual problems.

"This programme is not just for kids who have difficulty but for all kids," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "The method that it uses is great. It teaches you to write letters in a development order. It has a fine motor warm up."

The children learn little ditties. For the letter F the children recite: "Hop down, hop to the top, line across, little line down, little line across."

"There are no curls on the letters," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "This is just a basic style."

And there are a number of different multisensory devices to help children with different learning styles grasp the concept.

They have a toy bunny coming out of a hat that the children named 'Cabbage' to appeal to a visual learner. There is a compact disc that talks to the kids about how to hold a pencil, good writing posture and so forth. And there are also wooden pieces that the children put together to make up the letters, among other things.

"We learn capital letters first and then lower case letters because it is easier for kids to make bigger letters first," she said.

And the students in the pilot programme have really taken to it. Pinned in the hallway outside their classroom are stories all written in neat, understandable writing.

"To my surprise, because I had never done it before, it has really taken off," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "The kids love it. I have no kids complaining of having to handwrite. In other schools I have seen kids complaining about it and try to avoid it. We have been working quite closely with him to help bring it into the classroom."

When The Royal Gazette spoke to the students themselves, what came across was a sense of empowerment. "You write neater," one little boy said.

And these six-year-olds all had little stories they were working on by themselves at home, stories about pirates, firemen and fairies and what they did last week.

Mr. Benson said the kids loved the programme. "I have taught classes before and the kids complain about having to write," he said. "These kids love it. They come in on a Monday and they want to write about their weekends. And these second graders are writing over a page worth of work. They really do feel empowered about it.

"They don't have to worry about how they are going to form their letters. They can just let their thoughts flow on paper. It is just easy for them to write. I definitely think this programme should be extended. I think children Island-wide could benefit from it."

Mrs. Farnsworth thinks part of the reason kids are struggling more with basic writing is their increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

"Video games tend to cause a bit of a problem," she said. "Instead of going outside to play to develop all the muscles that children need for handwriting, kids are more sedentary. Not all kids, but many, are not getting the good old fashioned play we use to get like climbing trees, and pushing wagons and so forth. And this seems to have a negative impact on the skills necessary for handwriting. We have seen an increase in difficulties with handwriting over the years. And we are absolutely seeing more problems with boys than with girls."

Mrs. Farnsworth said her dream was to see the whole school take on the programme.

"It is not completely fool-proof but it really does help kids to recognise the proper techniques and to self-correct," she said.