20 march 2014

The Schreibmotorik Institut Holds a Workshop at the Second Deutschlehrertag (German Teacher's Day) in Saarbrücken

“Efficient handwriting. It's all about motor skills”: the workshop showed possibilities how educators can lead children to a flowing, efficient, legible and fatigue free handwriting.

About 300 teachers visited the second German Teacher's Day under the motto „media variety and German classes“ , which was organised by professor Dr. Julia Knopf at Saarland University. Besides listening to a speech to the plenum by German methodologist professor Dr. Ulf Abraham from Bamberg University, the participants were able to visit one out of twelve workshops and deepen their specialised knowledge with the aim of using media sucessfully in German classes.

Graphomotor skills – analysed with the help of computers

The Schreibmotorik Institut workshop was held by Dr. Christian Marquart, scientific advisor for motor skills at the Schreibmotorik Institut, Daniela Westner, director of the Schreibmotorik Institut and Corinna Weis, research assistant at the Lehrstuhl Fachdidaktik Deutsch Primarstufe (chair of teaching methodology German for primary education) at Saarland University.

Beginning with scientific findings about motor learning which they communicated in the first part of the workshop, in the second part they focused on identifying critical factors of influence concerning the writing process. With the WritingCoach®'s help, a computer and graphic tablet-based kinematic analysis of movements, which measures and graphically presents speed, pressure and acceleration, it is possible to record the qualities of the motion sequence and show potentials. Finally the participants were given suggestions for their own lessons with practical exercises.

Chair of teaching methodology German for primary education at Saarland University