Examining the use of the Shore Handwriting Screening to assess the handwriting skills of pre-kindergarteners

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of the Shore Handwriting Screening (SHS; Shore, 2003) and the SHS Score Sheet, created by researchers at East Carolina University, and assess their relationship to a standardized fine motor assessment in the pre-kindergarten population. Standardized assessments to measure handwriting skills of pre-kindergarten students are lacking (Feder & Majnermer, 2003; Puranik & Lonigan, 2009; Rosenblum, Weiss, & Parush, 2009). A prominent reason students are referred to occupational therapy in school is because of handwriting difficulties and fine motor problems (Asher, 2006; Feder, Majnemer, & Synnes, 2000). In order to provide the most effective intervention for students, it is important that occupational therapy practitioners are appropriately evaluating students' skills. Pre-kindergarten students' scores on the SHS were compared to their scores on a portion of a standardized fine motor assessment, the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition (BOT-2; Bruininks & Bruininks, 2005). Testing the SHS and BOT-2 across two socioeconomic groups provided an opportunity to compare the scores across a broad range of pre-kindergarten students. Thirty-six students from a federally funded pre-kindergarten program and fourteen students from a private pre-kindergarten classroom completed the SHS and BOT-2 and scores were compared within and across the two classrooms. Results show that the SHS displayed moderate to strong correlations with three subtests of the BOT-2 (Fine Motor Precision, Fine Motor Integration, and Manual Dexterity). Students from the private pre-kindergarten classroom obtained higher scores on both the SHS and three of the four subtests of the BOT-2 in comparison to the federally funded pre-kindergarten students. The SHS, along with the SHS Score Sheet, is a functional and practical handwriting screening that shows evidence of being related to a standardized fine motor assessment.