Acquiring penmanship and writing skills from the first to fifth grade of primary school: Joined-up writing vs. Comenia Script

The project presented here deals with a typical human means of communication – writing. The aim of the project is to map the developmental dynamics of handwriting from the first to the fifth grade of primary school. The question remains topical because of the fact that several systems of writing have been used in the past few years. Our project focuses on comparing the systems of joined-up handwriting (the standard Latin alphabet) and the most widespread form of printed handwriting: Comenia Script. The research can be marked as sectional; pupils took a writing exam at the beginning and at the end of the 2015/2016 school year. The total number of respondents was 624 pupils, evenly distributed according to the school year, system of writing and gender. To evaluate handwriting, the evaluation scale of Veverková and Kucharská (2012) was adjusted to include a description of phenomena related to graphomotor and grammatical aspects of writing, including the overall error rate and work with errors. Each area that was observed included a series of indicators through which it was possible to create a comprehensive image of the form handwriting took in the given period. Each indicator was independently classified on a three-point scale. Thanks to that, a comprehensive image of the form of writing of a contemporary pupil emerged.