The sickening letter sent by Stewart Blackburn

By Cara Sulieman & Paul Thornton

A LETTER sent to the parents of tragic Jessica McCagh by fire-ball killer Stewart Blackburn after her murder shows his obsession with death, a handwriting expert has revealed.

Sick Blackburn, 18, penned a poison note from his cell at HMP Perth before being convicted of dousing pretty Jessica in petrol and setting her on fire.

Now top handwriting expert Barbara Weaver has revealed that his child-like writing shows it was just a matter of time before the youth lashed out.

Barabara, from from the Cambridge School of Graphology, said his letter proved he was prone to lash out and likely to have fantasies about the death and a desire to punish.

“Lacks sensitivity”

She also said Stewart’s writing indicated that he had issues with his mother and reveals a cold, calculating individual who doesn’t think about the feelings of others.

Barbara said: “Distortions in his writing indicate that he does not deal well with personal situations and he lacks sensitivity to other people’s feelings.

“It could well indicate a harsh, crude and brutal individual.

“He expects others to do all the adjusting to him, he refuses to admit that he could be wrong and will fight back rather than compromise.

“Lash out”

“He is especially rebellious when he feels insecure, and tries to win through intimidation.

“He has a temper and so this will fuel his defiance even further, so that he is likely to lash out easily.

“The crude epitaph on the final page is also significant in that it shows no sensitivity towards the feelings of others.”

She goes on to say that the letter shows that Stewart is obsessed with death.

She said: “He may have fantasies about death, either related to someone else or regarding himself.

“He does mention wanting to die in his letter.”

The High Court in Livingston learned Stewart had been fostered as a child.

And Barbara added: “When there is an extreme leftward trend it usually means there has been an incomplete mother bonding stage.

“The writer is likely to have unresolved issues with his mother or mother substitute.

“There are sufficient examples to suggest that this is a strong feature of his character.”

That ties in with evidence given during the High Court trial which heard he had spent time in foster care as a child but still harboured hopes of being reunited somehow with his natural mum.

“Contempt for authority”

His note, addressed to Jessica’s sister Ashley, is littered with spelling mistakes and does not even spell Jessica’s name correctly.

In it, Blackburn begged forgiveness and promised never to set foot in Arbroath after his release.

Tellingly, his letter suggests he may now also suffer to adapt to spending the next few years in prison.

She adds: “There are indicators of defiance in his writing. Misplaced capitals reveal contempt for authority and a refusal to be ordered about. He tends to be troublesome without cause.”

Most revealingly, she says that Stewart’s handwriting tells of mood swings, emotional instability and unpredictability, and a self-imposed isolation in order to keep his feelings switched off.

She said: “Stewart’s writing has wide word spacing which indicates social isolation from others, either self imposed or imposed on him by the rejection of others.

“By keeping his distance from others, the writer is able to keep control over his emotions.

“He is lonely and fears being alone.

“He doesn’t want to lose the thing he loves, so tenaciously hangs on to what he has.”

And it isn’t just the letters themselves that are child-like – Barbara said that the composition of the note shows that Stewart’s emotional growth stopped when he was a young boy.

“Self-centred”

She said: “Many psychoanalysts believe that an individual’s emotional growth goes through a number of stages. The first stage is referred to as the oral stage.

“During this period, the child is totally self-centred.

“The whole world revolves around him and his whole focus is on the satisfaction and gratification of his immediate needs.

“If he stays rooted in the oral stage, all his future behaviour will subconsciously reflect what he learned during that stage, for instance tantrums, crying and outrageous behaviour in order to gain attention.

“The writer shows signs of the need for attention.

“Fulfilment”

“If the child has not received sufficient love and attention during his formative years, he will suffer psychological damage.

“He will continue into adulthood trying to find the fulfilment he never had.

“The incomplete oral phaser will enact very childish behaviour as an adult. He will behave in childish ways in order to get his needs met.”

The hand-scrawled letter, addressed to Jessica’s sister Ashley, is littered with spelling mistakes and does not even spell Jessica’s name correctly.

In it, Blackburn begs forgiveness and promises never to set foot in Arbroath after his release but insists the tragic teenager’s death was an accident.

He also acknowledges that he is to spend many years in prison but offers a chilling insight to his psyche when he claims he will torch himself in front of her family on his release.

He said: “If you want when I get out I will stand in front of you all and set myself on fire. Just so I a bit happier noin that am dead to and can be with Jeska.

“That’s all I want is to be with her.”

Blackburn claims in the note that he was set to ask Jessica to marry him and said he wants to visit her grave.

He said: “I got Jeska a ring and was away to ask her to marry me and move in but f***** that up.

“If you want can you write to me to let me no how Dylan is getting on and whats haing with Jeska cuz when get out whant to go see the grave miss her so much more than anything am sorry.

“I no you hate me but can you write bak plz even if its just the onec.”

“RIP”

Blackburn ends the note with an apology and a line claiming he loves all of Jessica’s family.

It reads: “Am Sorry from Stewart.

“Love you all by.

“Write back plz

“RIP Jeska.

“Am sorry with all my hart.”

See more of our pictures at our Flickr site and videos at our dedicated channel,  Deadline TV.

So earlier today, one of my chick friends was telling me that I should’ve been one of these two.

I don’t know what I’m really trying to prove in this entry. I guess I’m not as manly as I thought I was. Dammit.

I carry this book with me everywhere and use it for pretty much anything. Grocery list, passing notes, writing down thoughts -you name it. Makes me wonder how I ever lived without it.

~D

Organizational ability constitutes one executive function (EF) component essential for common everyday performance. The study aim was to explore the relationship between handwriting performance and organizational ability in school-aged children.

Participants were 58 males, aged 7–8 years, 30 with dysgraphia and 28 with proficient handwriting. Group allocation was based on children’s scores in the Handwriting Proficiency Screening Questionnaire (HPSQ). They performed the Hebrew Handwriting Evaluation (HHE), and their parents completed the Questionnaire for Assessing Students’ Organizational Abilities-for Parents (QASOA-P). Significant differences were found between the groups for handwriting performance (HHE) and organizational abilities (QASOA-P). Significant correlations were found in the dysgraphic group between handwriting spatial arrangement and the QASOA-P mean score. Linear regression indicated that the QASOA-P mean score explained 42% of variance of handwriting proficiency (HPSQ). Based on one discriminant function, 81% of all participants were correctly classified into groups. Study results strongly recommend assessing organizational difficulties in children referred for therapy due to handwriting deficiency.

from Research in Developmental Disabilities

From Bigger Picture’s blog (which is so awesome it’s going in the blogroll!)

It’s true that most people type and text all day, laughing off their “bad” handwriting and saying “Ah, what does it matter…”  But what if it you could change your life by changing your handwriting? What if even changing the form of one letter, such as the first letter of your first name, could unlock your soul’s potential?

Graphologists have long known that the psyche expresses its deepest truths through the pen. Yet Vimala Rodgers has discovered that line of communication works both ways—meaning you can “reprogram” your subconscious by making purposeful shifts in your handwriting.

“Our writing habits are a graphic image of our thought habits, imprinted in the subconscious mind from birth onward,” says Vimala Rodgers, author of the new interactive learning kit, Transform Your Life Through Handwriting (Sounds True, December 2009). “They reflect attitudes that support our talents and abilities as well as those that put a screeching halt on our creativity.”

This is not a course in penmanship—the first of Vimala’s “Five Noble Truths of Handwriting” is that there is no such thing as good or bad script. Instead, you will learn to recognize the encoded messages from your soul in every stroke of the pen. Is there a self-sabotaging loop in your lowercase f? Is a counterclockwise O stifling your inner truth? You’ll learn the hidden meanings in each letter, allowing you to clear away blockages, heal old wounds, and express your full creativity.

Here are six ways you can start to changing your handwriting and transforming your life.

1. Landscape – portrait direction is common, your dreams are not.
2. Margins – a generous left margin releases the past, narrower right margin moves you into your future.
3. The initial of your first name – your greatest challenge and once mastered, your greatest strength.
4. No lines ever – lines reflect “stay in the box and play it safe.”
5. Moderately sized letters –  no extremes in size.
6. Vertical slant – encourages you to see everything going on without an emotional charge. 

For more information, visit:

Q&A with Alphabetician Vimala Rodgers

Q: We all type or text so much of the day. Other than journaling or signing my name, when will I use the new handwriting?

A: Use your new handwriting each time you want to communicate–whether at work, at home, in jotting a shopping list, a To-Do list, Thank You notes, birthday cards, or writing a letter to a good friend. There’s an entirely different energy experienced between you and your brain when you type and when you handwrite. Pick up your pen and find out for yourself.

Q: Is this spiritual or scientific?

A: Both. The use of the Alphabet is without dogma, without belief system, and is available to anyone who chooses to write consciously. As Einstein once said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” I prefer to use the world “spirituality” rather than “religion,” as religion is based on belief and spirituality is based on experience. Einstein also said, “The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science.”

Q: How does Sanskrit fit into all this?

A: I began studying Sanskrit in 1981 because I often heard differing translations of the same word or phrase by those reputed to be scholars. I wanted to read it for myself. In the first class we were handed a sheet with the Devanagari (Script of the Gods—in which Sanskrit is written). The letters were not arranged linearly, but vertically, with each letter sitting neatly in a particular petal of a particular chakra. With eyes wide and a smile of gratitude in my heart, I correlated the letters of our Roman alphabet with the particular chakras in which they lived: another piece of many yet to come. It also confirmed what I had only suspected: The Alphabet is a Sacred Science.

The opening words of Chapter XVI of the Bhagavad Gita (The Song of God). Lord Krishna, representing God, begins with this proclamation: “There are 26 Qualities we must perfect before we can be free.”

Q: Is handwriting a kind of meditation or yoga?

A: Once it becomes a daily habit, oh yes. When we wrap our fingers around a pen, pencil, or chopstick, we trigger the prefrontal lobe of the brain: our creative center, which is also the location of highest of the six main chakras. When we use a keyboard (not a piano) to type and communicate words, we draw from the limbic system–the primitive part of the brain. Both the kinesthetic effect and the level of consciousness are quite different because we are, as it were, dipping into different wells.

Q: What letter should I start with?

A: Go to Appendix A and choose three traits you really want in your life and the letters they reflect. Then follow “How to Use This Program” on page five of the Guidebook. You cannot skip a day; you must write for 40 days in succession. OR, if you prefer to write only one letter, have it be the initial of your first name—not nickname, but your real first name.

Read more Q&A in the online press kit at http://bit.ly/18vgc5 

What Makes Tiger Tick???      

I am sorry I have been so delinquent with my blog. I know you are waiting to see who I may reveal next. I have so many signatures to share with you and I promise to do better in the New Year. However, I could not resist closing the year with someone fabulous, fantastic and  fascinating and all of a sudden whose personal life has become fodder for the media.

Ok as if you haven’t read and heard enough about Tiger Woods these past few weeks. Here is a fresh Approach – Another slant of his personality through his pen stroke and not his putt. This is no duplication, no speculation  No  words of  more women coming out of the wood  works - just good old fashion scientific facts. Only what I see beneath my microscope will be revealed.

What makes Tiger Tick??
Tiger has very small handwriting. The biggest misconception about small handwriting is that it reveals stinginess or low self-esteem. – Totally wrong – quite the contrary. Small handwriting in fact, tells us that individuals such as Tiger Woods posses a very high level on concentration. He is both intense and highly productive.
His handwriting slants to the right which expresses he is a ‘heart’ man, he is ruled totally by his emotions. He may give off this cool and aloof exterior of a logical practical person but he is all heart and his emotions run deep inside. The I dot shows that he has a good eye for detail.  The t bar crossed at the top and upwards tells us he is highly goal orientated and a complete optimist.  The illegible signature expresses he plays his cards close to his chest only a few will really know and understand  the true Tiger. The long lower loop in the letter g demonstrates  his high level of energy and stamina.

The upper slender loop in the d defines a man who is extremely sensitive to criticism. The circled W shows he is very protective of the people around him. The loop in the middle of the  W warns us that behind the calm exterior he has a tendency to worry more than is necessary. I always wondered what this worry loop was in this billion dollar signature. – He really has plenty to worry about at the moment.
On December 16th Tiger Woods was voted Athlete of the Decade. He received more votes than Lance Armstrong who came in second. Tiger Woods has won 64 worldwide victories and more PGA tour titles in the past decade. This four-time Master holder, 3 times US Open and 4 times PGA winner has taken the game of Golf to a new whole new level. Having won at the early age of 21 he has given the sport a new and improved look by bridging the generation gap. No longer is the game of Golf just part of the old boy network.

However, he is a Master in disguise and tried to juggle too many balls at once. He has suddenly bounced out of the game taking the backdoor approach .  He should  really just come clean and face the music and play the field that he knows and loves so well. Tiger your salacious scandal will soon sink into oblivion – Don’t worry the public has a short memory. I am sure Tiger will get his groove back and come out swinging - so you made a slip or two or three…  but whose counting??  but really no one wants a player who withdraws too soon.  I know for sure he’ll be back a bigger better  billion dollar athlete – a renewed  Tiger Woods – Stick with what you know best – Your signature style as an exceptional Golfer!!!

Last month I wrote about our schedule being too overwhelming, I had the occasional meltdown, and I’ve lately said that Classical Education was too stifling for us. I’ve since realised that these were simply growing pains. What I mistook for ‘problems’ were merely settling-in and adjustment issues that have since ironed themselves out. After all, I did begin first grade a year early so it’s not surprising that we encountered a few bumps along the way. The only real changes I’ve made that were necessary were allowing Esa to choose what he wants to study for science, requiring less narration and focusing on narration as a skill, rather than an assessment tool, at this point. We’re back to doing copywork as we were (via Writing with Ease), albeit smaller chunks. Adding in a few breaks has made a huge difference as well.

Things are now, thankfully, running like a well-oiled train. And I’ll add that it’s mostly WTM. I’ve learned that ‘living books’ are different for everyone. For us, living books are books that make a subject not only come alive, but make it accessible. Esa was not enjoying the old living books that Ambleside recommends. Maybe he’s just not ready for them. (He does, however, enjoy a few like James Herriot and Our Island Story). He loves the Usborne and DK books, with their bright pictures and photographs. These books may be packed with facts, but he likes that and learns from them. He makes up the ‘ideas’ himself.

We do, however, do more with art and music than WTM recommends, and handicrafts, all CM influences that enrich our homeschool greatly.

So, how are things? Here is a glimpse at what we’re up to and Esa’s progress:

Reading

We’re steaming along quite well and things are really coming together. Esa’s reading easy books fluently and reading things from his environment with ease. Doing dictation with magnetic letters has been such a great tool; I can’t recommend it enough. If your child struggles to write, this is an amazing way of getting dictation in. (Any sort of movable alphabet, with several of each letter will do) We plan to finish phonics instruction by next summer (possibly sooner).

Literature

I’m being more selective about our literature choices and Esa is enjoying the stories more. If none of the recommendations from the SOTW activity guide are to his liking, we find our own. We use these for our narration practice.

Poetry

We do it when we have time. We can go several days without reading any, then have phases where that’s all we’re reading. I recently bought Esa a new I Can Read book (level 3!) called My Parents Think I’m Sleeping and it’s a book of poems. Esa’s going to love reading that.

Grammar

We’re working our way through First Language Lessons. It’s quite slow in the beginning, so I’m remedying this by combining lessons, or skipping some. We’re on about lesson 32 and are very ready to move on to pronouns!

Handwriting

Although Esa’s handwriting isn’t very Italic-y yet, it has greatly improved. He does 2 letters a week and I supplement with handwriting sheets that I make for him using the StartWrite software. He’s half-way through the first workbook and I plan to start him on the second one while he’s doing capital letters from the first workbook.

Copywork

Handwriting serves as a kind of warm-up for copywork, which we do immediately after handwriting. I make the copywork sheets using the StartWrite software, which helps to reinforce the Italic handwriting. We do copywork twice a week at the moment.

Writing

We’re following the model laid out in Writing With Ease and as we’ve just finished with week one, I can’t comment too much just yet. One of the reasons I was worried about the WTM method was that shortly after implementing it fully, Esa stopped wanting to write on his own. He loves to write and used to write all the time, and obviously I was worried about this. but he’s back to writing again. He makes his own little books, writes letters and cards to friends and family, and enjoys any kind of labelling activity. We also supplement with activites from Games for Writing.

Math

Esa’s doing wonderfully well in math. Singapore Math deserves much of the credit. This programme is just right for Esa and challenges him just enough. I was having a look at the second half of it and discovered that he’ll be doing multiplication and division in a few months. Gulp!

Spanish

I’m a bit bored with our curriculum as it’s simply vocabulary-based and requires a lot of drill, but Esa’s enjoying it. I’m looking forward to finishing it and using something more immersion-based.

Natural History

We’re wrapping up our study of snakes and reptiles. This has been a big hit and Esa has learned so much and can even identify many snakes (not something we worked on directly). The Life in Cold Blood DVD has been an amazing supplement. Esa wants to study mushrooms next, so we’ll do that for a week or 2 in January. Not sure what we’ll do next. I’m looking forward to spring when we’ll resume our study of plants. This is something we will do each year. Esa loves gardening and I’d like for him to gain in-depth knowledge of at least one area of science.

World History

We’ve just finished chapter 15 of Story of the World. We’re really enjoying it and doing more of the hands-on activities from the guide.

British History

Esa really likes the Usborne History of Britain. We read a 2-page spread each week and Esa does a colouring page from his Ancient Britain Colouring book. We’re hoping to resume Our Island Story soon.

Geography

We do Geography one day a week. We do the map activities from the SOTW activity guide, then I drill Esa on things like the continents, the compass, the oceans, hemispheres, etc. Sometimes I print off a blackline map of the world and have him colour the contients different colours or some other similar activity.

Artist/Music Study

We’ll study 2 more Monets and then move on. I’m planning to switch composers in January. (More about that later) We love these subjects.

Drawing

We’re working slowly through the first lesson from Drawing with Children. The activities are challenging for Esa, but I’m having him repeat them several times and he’s making definite improvement.

So, Classical Education is working for us. And I’m so pleased. I fell in love with Classical Education 2 years ago and wanted so much to teach my son this way,  but I had so many doubts, so many worries. The biggest of which was: What if it doesn’t suit him? And, What if it’s too hard for us? What if he hates it? What if it kills his love of learning?

Yes, it’s still early days yet, but already I can see the fruits of our labours, his love of learning is growing, and it is working for us.

I’m planning to add 2 new things to our homeschool…more art and spelling. (I’ll talk about that another time.) And since we’re about half-way through first grade, I’ve started thinking about second grade…more planning…yippeee! (and I’ll definitely be blogging about that soon!)

For the next 2 weeks, we’re going to continue our homeschooling, but we’re going to have a more relaxed pace (I don’t want to stop his reading instruction because he’s having a learning-spurt with reading just now and I want to run with it). We’re going to focus on math and handicrafts, do some baking, finish up reptiles, review previous sections of Spanish, play games, and read A Christmas Carol.

Is cursive writing still a valuable skill for students? – Related Stories – ASCD SmartBrief.

An interesting debate and one I have had with parents from Italy, Germany and the US in particular. Some students are made to learn proper cursive at home. In Germany, some students even start cursive alongside block.

And then I came across this post on Livejournal yesterday: ” As a result, he follows every activity with confident and writes both cursive and block writing clearly enough (yeah, the French education system teaches cursive writing in CP/first grade). “

I was surprised to see what early age they start. In Italy, children start to write in CAPITALS and then move into cursive in second or third grade. Their handwriting is often quite hard to read. I also find the handwriting of a Spanish/Italian girl in my class who went to school in France, really hard to read.

Nevertheless, the debate about handwriting is on-going. At our school the policy states no particular style, we encourage the Nelson Handwriting Scheme and teach the joint writing accordingly. However, we do not have handwriting lessons, it is integrated especially in the older years.

What do your schools do? To cursive or not to cursive?

(Card image created HERE)

I’ve had ample discussions with many of my friends that are around my age about the need for handwriting in school. When I was in school is was absolutely mandatory that we not only practice our handwriting, but be proficient at writing the letters. This goes for both print and cursive. 1st-3rd grade we practiced print writing and 4th-6th grade we practiced cursive handwriting. Grades 7-8 we were finally given the autonomy to write in whatever style we liked. Many of my friends who were in grammar school in the late 80’s and through the 90’s had a curriculum similar to this one.

Recently, I have read the second article of the year in regards to whether or not school districts should require their teachers to teach cursive handwriting. The most recent article “School Adjust How Writing is Taught in the Text Age” discusses this paradigm shift. Many education administrators site three reasons why cursive handwriting needs to be reevaluated.

1. In the days of high-stakes testing many districts have had to really streamline “ancillary” subjects like handwriting so they can spend more time with reading and mathematics.

2. As we conclude the first decade of the 21st century, many students aren’t communicating through pen and paper writing — let alone cursive handwriting.

3. Even when students are writing using pen and paper they typically skew to print writing instead of cursive.

Cursive writing should be here to stay.

Personally, I think these are all valid reasons why a district should re-evaluate the handwriting curriculum. However, to eliminate cursive handwriting would be a big mistake. I have two reasons why I think it would be a mistake:

1. If you are not a fan of high-stakes testing to evaluate student learning, then eliminating handwriting from the curriculum wouldn’t be consistent with that logic. If you analyze many of the “reforms” going through our system today, you begin to send a trend where little by little we are asking to dismiss many things that were core to our own learning. For example, reducing the amount of time student take elective courses (art, music, etc.), doubling the amount of time students are doing reading/mathematics, etc. Eliminating cursive handwriting from the curriculum would just add to schools just focusing on “core subjects” and straying away from creating the “whole student.”

2. Ironically as I am writing this blog I realise that once again I am not physically writing something down on a piece of paper. I am using type for a medium of communication. This shows my privilege in my access to technology for communication. However, I am one of the few people in our society that has this privilege. The article that I using as a basis for this blog discusses how many students use technology as means of communication. I will grant them that.

Texting is NOT the only form of communication.

However, as long as ALL students don’t have consistent access to communication through technology then eliminating cursive handwriting would be problematic. I feel it needs to be understood that handwriting is just one form of communication. This one form of communication is the easiest to teach (usually through repetition and application), the cheapest to teach, and is universal among all literate people in our society. Using WordPress for blogging, creating a Meebo account for streamlined communication, and developing a Linked-In page for social networking is not easy to teach, cheap to furnish, or particularly universal among everyone. Web 2.0 has done an excellent job at providing communication services free of charge, but training principals, teachers, and students in these Web 2.0 applications is not free. Therefore, until ALL districts provide ALL stakeholders with the tools and the knowledge to use texting, IM, and Web 2.0 tools, districts must not be quick to eliminate handwriting (including cursive) from their curriculum. Rather, they should find a way to strike a nice balance.

This is an issue on which it seems to be almost impossible to achieve consensus of opinion whether you are discussing with parents or educators.

This article I came across today sums up quite neatly the issues and major arguments on both sides:

Cursive Article

Personally, i have to confess that i’m in the camp that says it’s too much ‘yesterday’ and that i would rather see children expressing their thoughts and ideas in writing creatively and with pleasure, rather than be worrying terribly about the appearance and the calligraphy of their writing.

However, it is at this point that i also have to confess that my views may be coloured by personal experience. Firstly, i have really ugly handwriting, but stopped getting hung up about it years ago. I blame a primary school teacher who tried to make an obviously left-handed child in to right-handed. By the time i got out of her class the damage was done. i loved to express myself in writing as a boy, to write long, imaginative stories or to express my views. however, if anyone made a fuss about how the writing appeared I would write the minimum necessary and clam up.

So, my own view is to allow children to develop a basic handwriting which is legible, enables them to write comfortably in a way that others can read, but not to focus on ‘process’ beyond that. instead, more focus can go in to the creative and expressive aspects of writing. However, i know there are many educators with strong and potentially legitimate arguments to the contrary who would disagree with me vehemently.

So, the jury is out, the debate goes on. Would be interested to get others’ experiences and views.

In a previous post on laminating your own handwriting chart I wrote about downloading handwriting fonts onto your computer.

Here are detailed  step-by-step instructions!  I found these font website sites very useful:

About.com:desktop publishing~ good school print and italic (Jarman) fonts.

fontspace.com ~ scroll to Cursiv (1 with and 1 without lines) and select the font file you like. This site has a fabulous selection of other beautiful fonts!

1. Download the font file. (I choose the  True Type version for Windows.)
2. Save the file on your computer
3. Now, because these are zipped files (compressed to store loads of info) you’ll need to extract files (slect this on the left side panel)
4. An Extract File Wizard will open the individual files. One file will have a coloured icon with a “T” or a “O”.  Right-click this file and press copy.
5. Click on your Start button and select Control Panel
6. Double-Click on Fonts icon
7. In the space between the font icons right-click and press Paste
8. Your downloaded font file will now appear in your MSWord and other Word programs.
9. Open your Word document and select your font in this program and increase the size to suit your child’s ability and maturity or for the page you are typing.

I hope this helps!  I have made all my own copywork pages using downloaded fonts!

In addition to traditional writing practice (repeated writing of words), extra exercises are used (writing the colors words for objects) so that the repeated writing of words hopefully does not become tedious, insha Allah.

Some ideas for instruction:

1. Stay on one word list per week so that student gets lots of practice with the same words.

2. For Arabic, use a weekly word list to build vocabulary.  Model it after English spelling classes.  Give a pretest and end of the week test.  Have student write in pyramid writing to get more exposure to the spelling of the words, e.g.

first letter

first letter, second letter

first letter, second letter, third letter

3. You might try writing practice with just one word the first day, adding on another word each day, making sure to give practice with previous words.

More?

My goal is to post one weekly word list for each week.  Thanks to my bud, Umm Abdul Basir, for inspiring me to make these up.  We’re trying to provide our daughters with cursive practice and the idea to do the Arabic came out of our brainstorming as well.

Please let me know if you find these helpful and would like to see them weekly. That will help motivate me to keep on top of them, insha Allah, which I need to do anyway. 

A teacher working with elementary students

In any personal service business, setting goals and objectives with the clients is of utmost importance.  Sometimes clients are not on the “same page” as the tutor.  It’s important to agree on goals and objectives, or any program heads “south” quickly.

I recently tutored a child who it became evident very quickly had a major reading problem. The child’s spoken English was pretty good (English being the child’s third language, but the only language she has been educated in up to this point), which was helpful.

Current expected reading level in the child's class at school.

The child is currently really stuggling with this reading level (but is learning).

She had been passed up by the school to the next early elementary grade, and was totally unable to do the work, because she could not read any of the books.  The parents objective was to turn their child’s F’s into A’s within one or two weeks of the start of tutoring.

In all my years of teaching, and of helping struggling readers, all of my professional experience has borne out the advice given by reading professionals, which is you need to go ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE READER’S CURRENT LEVEL and START THERE–not to keep pushing and pushing at a level which is FAR too high for them to understand.

The child's handwriting at the start of tutoring

The child had trouble not only in reading, but in writing anything legibly (clearly had not been taught proper formations and directions of the pencil by previous teachers at school), math (mixing up addition and subtraction), spelling (not interested in doing the work to remember spelling words).

Handwriting improvement after three tutoring sessions of twenty minutes each

All this was greatly complicated by my having no language in common with the mother, and having to use intermediaries to translate (the father, when present, my daughter, or other tutoring students who happened to be present in the house at the time).  The mother had never been to school herself, and so could not understand why two weeks of tutoring was not producing “A” grades (even though the child was making very good progress).  I explained the situation to the father, who was able to understand.  I proposed that with vacation coming up, if we worked intensively on READING, I might be able to improve the child’s reading level by two-three months by the time he got back to school.

When the parents came to me, very insistent that I tutor their child because they wanted ME, I told them I was completely full and had no more time.  I suggested other tutors and even gave the parents phone numbers, but they were very insistent on having me.  I pointed out my schedule, which was clearly posted on the wall, and said that even if I did want to tutor their child, the only possible time would be after 8:30 pm.  The mother jumped in and said, “No problem!  No problem!”  I was surprised since the child is in the early elementary grades.  Often we did not finish until 10 pm!  (This was of course after a full day of school.)  The parents indicated weekends were out because “they like to travel” on the weekends.

On top of everything else, the child had a lot of behavior problems.  The child was intelligent, and I developed a good relationship with the child, but she had trouble staying in her chair for more than 5-10 minutes, and every minute or two would try to get off-topic not wanting to do the work we were there to do.  This is most likely why the school “passed” her into the next grade — perhaps the teacher couldn’t face having her another year, in spite of her not having mastered ANY of the material of her grade.  The other possible reason is that if she should have been held back, it’s quite possible that these particular parents went in and threw a fit, and the school just let her pass.  (This happens often in most of the schools in this country.)

I also had trouble communicating with the current teacher to find out what lessons (such as spelling tests) that we should be doing in a given week.  I explained that to the mother.  The mother brought me a photocopy of the spelling book, and the page she told me to study with the child for the next test did not turn out to be the proper lesson after all.  So of course the child received another “F.”  The classroom teacher sent me one email during this time, but I could not reach him on the phone, and other times he did not respond.  (To be fair he really has his hands full with this year’s class.)

The child hasn’t come for a week.  Her father called last week to say she was sick, but other people have told me they have asked someone else to tutor her at an earlier hour (much better solution).  The last time he called, I said if they had found someone else to tutor her, it was perfectly fine.  The father thinks the hour is late, and the child is getting quite tired at night.  Last night he called again, and said they’d like to pick up the photocopied books.

I’m not sure what will become of this child, but I am not at all unhappy to lose her as a client.  The parents were showing up at all hours of the day and night, even on Saturdays and Sundays (always without calling) and coming in “to talk.”  They are also extremely demanding, and the mother shouts constantly and is clearly in the habit of bullying everyone.

But the parents, especially the mother, weren’t understanding the most basic problem–that without addressing the child’s READING LEVEL, all the other tutoring will be money down the drain.  I don’t think the mother understands this.  This client was really beginning to affect my health, and by letting her go, I have time to take others who have called me, and who are less stressful.  The clients had already run though a string of tutors before coming to me.  It seems to me that this mother wants quick, short-term results (A’s on all tests within one or two weeks of tutoring) without wanting to consider that the child has much larger long-term problems (such as raising the reading level up to grade level) that need addressing.

I do worry about the child herself, however.

Do my readers have any thoughts about all this?

In previous blogs we have many times discussed possibilities of composing music with help of computer, without even basic musical knowledge. One of these programs is Virtual Music Composer which gives you in the most simple way “pleasure of composing” your own music.

Steps of composing are following:

1. You have to install Virtual Music Composer on your computer.
2. Then, you simple play with input parameters, on the composition software.
3. And, simply click the Compose button.
4. Software creates a new composition and then plays it, so you can hear it.

If you are still skeptical, here is a very good example. Have you ever thought of composing music by written words? It sounds very bizarre but it is possible! All you need is software named Music Text Composition Generator and then just follow a simple procedure:

1. Type or copy any text into the Text Field.
2. Give the file a unique name.
3. Set the Beats per Minute
4. Select your instrument
5. Click on “Generate your music”. The composition will display and play. You may save your midi file for future use and print your sheet music for live instrument performances.

This program was proposed in 1997 to the John Cage Trust as an accompaniment to the John Cage text font based on the handwriting of the composer. The idea was basic and simple-every letter of the alphabet was assigned to a note on a scale.

And now the main question: Do you still find Virtual Music Composer unreal?!

I’m a little partial to digital tools that can be used to create diagrams and images that look hand drawn — Balsamiq Mockups is a wonderful example.

I’ve often thought it’d be great to have a font made from my own handwriting, enabling me to “hand annotate” digitally crafted images to add an informal, playful and personal touch. Of course, creating a typeface from scratch is an expensive, skillful, labor-intensive process, best left to professional typographers, not amateurs like myself.

So imagine my delight in discovering FontCapture, an entirely web-based application that enables you to create a font from your own handwriting within minutes — and what’s more, it’s free. All you need is a printer and a scanner.

“Fontifying” your handwriting is a simple, four-step process:

1. Print a specially formatted template.
2. Complete the template with your individual handwritten characters –  up to 128 glyphs. Be careful to align ascending and descending characters with the template’s baseline marks.
3. Scan your completed template back into your computer and upload it to the service.
4. Within a few seconds, you should see a preview of your font and a link to download it in OpenType format (see the screenshot above).

The service works very well. It’s simple, fast, free and accurate — though perhaps a little too accurate. FontCapture demonstrated  how appalling my handwriting really is! I didn’t do a perfect job of keeping my characters and glyphs aligned within the marks on the template, but the final result was a pretty good representation of my jittery scrawl.

I’d readily recommend the app to anyone who needs a digital representation of their handwriting, but sadly my own handwriting is too illegible to be charmingly applied to digital imagery.

What would you do with a font of your own handwriting?

Emma suddenly wants to write!  Normally she complains of hand fatigue after just her name, but today she brought me one of her favorite books and wanted to copy it.  Verbatim.  Into an old check register.  I talked her into letting me copy it into the check register while she “read” it to me, then she picked out her favorite characters to write on preschool-friendly paper.

From home and from school, she has learned all sorts of nemonic devices to help her remember letter formation.  ”Bat before the ball,” she murmurs while doing little b.  ”And here comes to dot flying in!” she exclaims as she dots her little i.  My favorite, though, was when she stopped after the straight line on big b and asks, “Does he have one or two big bellies?”