How Do You Teach Word Spacing?

Kindergarteners need to learn to space their words correctly.  But how exactly do you do that?  Most teachers are using the “put your index finger next to your last word as a spacer” strategy.  This isn’t a terrible idea, but many children can grasp the true spacing measure.  Here is why you should attempt to explain it to young children.

First, children are often smarter than we think.  Secondly, they like to know what adults know.  And finally, picking up your “helper hand” off the paper to space words will often result in paper shifts or postural shifts that result in the next word being written incorrectly.  Out of the pan, into the fire!

As children progress from kindergarten through elementary school, they are likely to have less and less handwriting instruction.  Quite frankly, I am seeing even kindergarten classrooms trying to race to language arts, while their students are still unsure of how to write lowercase letters.  That is going to create some interesting substitutions and compensations.  Children know that they are expected to produce written materials, and will substitute uppercase letters in the place of the harder-to-form lowercase letters, or search for a different word with letters that they recall.  What they won’t do is ask for more instruction.  They are kids!

OK, here is the skinny on spacing.  Regardless of the size of the letter, the correct amount of space between words is the width of a lowercase “o”.

That’s it.  Large or small, cursive or print.  One of my sharp students asked why I had left more space than this between the sample words on her homework.  Easy answer:  beginning writers often write larger than the sample, or they make errors.  If I used standard spacing, when she copied my sample and wrote a few of her letters too large, it would be harder for her to fit in her writing directly below my sample.  Her letters would extend past my sample.  Having to move her eyes up and on an angle to see the sample makes it even harder for an early writer to do a good job.

Achieving correct spacing is really not expected until late kindergarten.  Well, it isn’t expected by OT’s that understand the developmental progression of handwriting.  If a teacher asks me to work on spacing at the beginning of the year, I tell them that we have some other things to work on first.  Have they already assessed whether the child knows how to write all 56 letters?   First things first…..!