Dynamic Tripod Grasp

It did get me wondering snowberryZ. Not heard of it before now.
I’ve just tried to write with the pen in my fist. Crikey it’s difficult. My usually clear and fairly arty script became tiny and letters quite pointy.
No idea what’s behind it but await answers with interest.

I, considerably over 40, use the thing I now know as Dynamic Tripod Grasp, daughter under 40 in her fist. I always assumed it was because schools stopped teaching DTG, that is the 'fist' method is what you would 'naturally' start using and the DTG has to be taught and practised.

But that could be wrong of course...

I don't think children are, as a matter of course, 'taught' to hold a pen or pencil. It's considered very cruel old fashioned to teach children anything before they're 'ready'. In consequence they have deeply engrained bad habits.. Some teachers do it though...

Don't they do a lot of early stuff with very chubby crayons and marker pens? Neither of which are easy for their little fingers to hold in a tripod grip.

When I worked with secondary children I saw some dreadful grips and many of them found writing physically painful (so avoided it where possible)

And the way some young people hold their cutlery …! Surely a parent would have shown them the correct way once their hands could manage it?

The tripod grip is certainly something I encourage my minded children to use as it gives them much better control over a pen or pencil. I have some triangular pencils which help.
However the best way I find is to teach them how to use scissors correctly using their thumb and first two fingers, and keeping their elbow by their side. This trains those three digits to work together and helps them with their fine motor control. My two four-year olds can easily hold a pencil using the tripod grip.

Teachers used to walk around the class and correct the way people held their pens.
Does it still happen?

My mother says she remembers being rapped on her knuckles with a ruler when she wasn't holding her pen correctly!

Glad we've moved on from that

Children are taught the tripod grip, as it is puts least pressure on the hands muscles, so is more comfortable for longer periods of writing. Not all children do what they are taught!

I remember being rapped over the knuckles with a ruler as well snowberryz didn't mention it at home otherwise there would have been another telling off.

I have seen younger people with their fingers crossed over the pen in what looks like a very awkward position.

Same here.. Teachers rapped our knuckles quite frequently.
I expect it would be considered child abuse these days.

It is explained here in a video, in rather a lot of detail! However, it makes it very clear this is the best way to hold your pen.
www.theschoolrun.com/video-dynamic-tripod-grasp-better-handwriting

I can tell you the reason it is happening so much in Denmark. I don't know, but I suspect the reason is the same everywhere.

My generation of school-teachers - I started teaching in the 1970s - were taught to teach children to write by hand.

In Primary 1 you taught your class to hold a pencil usng their thumb and forefinger and letting the pencil rest on their middle finger during writing lessons. You started with letters i, o and u that could be written between two ruled lines in a jotter, and once the class had mastered these you progressed to all other letters that only take up the space between two ruled lines. Then letters like g with a tail that hangs down, and b and d that go above the top line. Jotters had thinner ruled lines above and below the ones the letters like a an u were on, so the tail of the g and the top of the f or l went down to the lower line and up to the upper as needed. I am sure you remember these jotters too.

Once the class had mastered the lower case letters, capitals were taught just as carefully and finally commas, full stops, colons, semi-colons, question marks and exclamation marks. And this took daily lessons throughout one or two years of school.

Marking written work, marks were awarded not only for the content. but for its appearance as well. Thus a child who was poor at spelling, might well be able to boast good marks for hand-writing and neatness.

We also taught children to sit up straight while writing (or reading) and only to rest their wrists (never their elbows - perish the thought!) on the desk. At this point, any child who persistently bent nearer to their work was sent to have their eyes tested! No-one would do this today either. And yes, we found the short-sighted and astigmatic and saved them many headaches due to poor sight.

Young teachers are no longer taught to teach writing - they just show the children how to form each letter and leave them to get on with it. They see no reason to correct the way a pencil is held, or to teach children to write legibly, as they will be using a computer or tablet most of the time and never need to write by hand. The children use any old writing pad or piece of paper that comes to hand with or without ruled lines, or even scrawl their way across a page of the small ruled squares we only used for sums.

Like me, you probably spent what felt like years at school making your upstrokes thin and your down strokes thick in "joined up writing". Thes days such a skill, if taught at all, is taught in art lessons in senior school for at most one or two lessons and called calligraphy.

No, Miss Adventure , as a general rule no-one corrects the way a pen or pencil is held these days, nor reminds a child who forgets to say please or thank you.

We are showing our age if we expect these things to be part of today's upbringing of children.

I teach reception children and we do teach children to hold their pencil in a tripod grip. If they don’t learn to hold a pencil correctly then writing in later years is very difficult.