Students' Handwriting

I just read an article from American Educator - Winter 2009-2010 for my Literature class, "Want to Improve Children's Writing? : Don't Neglect Their Handwriting," by Steve Graham, that talks about the relationship between a student's handwriting and writing. Graham states that if children cannot form letters quickly and legibily they cannot communicate their thoughts into written text. Graham also states that students who have a hard time with handwriting avoid writing and start to believe that they cannot write. When this happens they cannot keep up with their school work and fall behind. If a student cannot write fluently it is hard for them to keep up on note taking in class or on timed test, which will reflect in their grades. Graham stresses the importance of teaching handwriting to students and has developed a handwriting program which addresses the needs of children who are slow writers and children who have disabilties, and at the same time can be used for the entire class. He offers his programs free to teachers at www.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/casl.xml. I intend to look into this program to see what it entails and possibly add it to my tool box for my future students.