6 LPM
Learning to write – i mean, legibly – is more difficult than learning to read. Blame it to genes. Mic, at Grade 5, is still unable to make his hand writing good. Luckily, essay writing is not implemented for graders. Under the watchful eye of Nanay Jeanet, Lj is trying arduously to hurdle the rudiments of writing: learning how to write the letter C correctly not in an inverted position, as always. It goes too with small letters a, b confused with d, p with q or g and so with numbers 6 and 9. Six letters per minute (lpm), well, not bad enough but 6 lpm per sheet of paper is bad. That’s the way it is. Sometimes, after writing just three letters and missing the margin or not liking how a letter is positioned on the lines, Lj flips to another sheet and writes on again. He dislikes to repeat writing a word or letter again and again. 2-3 repeats are enough to wear down his patience. He sweats as much as when he is playing. We have his “kodigo” laminated so that it will not be “sweatened” or worst crumpled and trashed. At 5, Lj remains very poor in writing so much with reading. Experts say, there’s really nothing to worry until the age of 7, even 9. But we are beginning to sense his locomotive and reasoning sides of intelligence are maturing fast enough. In his case, learning the 3Rs is always tied to Pavlov’s theory of classical conditional. Writing can be sped up if there is an assurance of uninterrupted, sun-tanning, eardrum-shattering, eye-straining half-day splash. Just take off your clothes even while on study so that you can just dart off afterwards into the river or pool. And just pretend later to be too tired or suffering injury to evade lesson review.