Based on DepEd Order No. 16, series 2010, reading and writing will be taught beginning in the second semester of Grade 1. Inspite of the Department of Education continues to improves its reading, writing and arithmetic program as part of the Basic Education Agenda, in reality the learners are struggling and they will not able to achieve these competencies because there seem to have been lost along the way because of the mismatch between what learners can do or cannot, what teachers use or cannot do and what curriculum want the both of them to perform. Developing handwriting which comes in a series when taught will enable pupils to write legibly, uniformly, neatly and evenly. It must be focuses on meaningful and useful exercises that will help improve their own handwriting. Children need to develop handwriting skills are important component of the early grades. As handwriting skills becomes more involuntary, pupils begin to appear as fluent writers. On the other hand, for children having difficulties in acquiring writing skills handwriting can be a difficult task. Understanding how handwriting skills and abilities developed as well as how to provide effective handwriting instruction to all types of students is important for preventing handwriting problems (Saperstein Association, 2012)
For many years, researchers have paid much attention to early reading development, while giving limited attention to ealy writing development, while giving limited attention to early writing development (Clay, 2001; DeFord, 2010; Dobson 1988; Gomert & Fayol, 2010) The ability to write during the early childhood years can be a difficult and challenging task (Lienemann et al, 2010). In the early childhood classroom, teachers ask learners to write, and teachers seem to anticipate that all of the learners know how to write. That writing seems to be the easiest skills that any learner can learn as early as for a Grade one pupil. But most children at this level have little or no experience yet in writing and have limited life experience. This study aimed to address the handwriting difficulties of grade one learners as basis for learning intervention exemplars in one public school in the district II of Caloocan city for the school year 2018-2019. It also hopes to identify the writing ability of learners in Grade One, whether or not intervention handwriting activities can help them develop a positive attitude towards writing. At the end of the study researcher hopes to proposed localized, fun writing intervention activities that will help address the problems encounter by the learners and teachers. The researcher made use of the Descriptive Research Design. This design involves the description, recording , analysis and interpretation of conditions that now exist. The researcher utilized one Grade One teacher from Bagong Silang Elementary School with the 30 pupils in Grade One. To analyze the data gathered, the percentage, ranking, T-test for correlated samples, Pearson Product Moment Coeficient of Correlation were used as statistic tool. Based on the findings of the study, the study revealed that handwriting difficulties of grade one learners as assessed by the teachers were the following: difficulty to grip and posture, frequent erasing, drawing and scribbing, problems in writing with spacing, problems in writing with spacing, problems in letter shapes, writes slowly, has messy handwriting, refuses to write, failure to copy the correct letters or words and letters are of variable size. The handwriting activities developed by the researcher to address the handwriting difficulties as assessed by the teachers incudes; trace and color of which the skill being addressed was visual perceptual skills. The second activity, cut and paste shapes of which the skill being addressed was visual motor skills and the third activity, the Trace and Copy handwriting activity addressed the fine motor skills.
The handwriting performance of the pupils before and after the used of the developed handwriting activities based on the developed rubrics in terms of mastery was established. However there are top three most prevailing challenges encounted by the teachers in the implementation of handwriting activities first it the habitual absences of the pupils, next is time schedule and last is the cost and availability of the materials needed.
The researcher recommended to motivate teachers to assess the level of performance of pupils on their handwriting using the developed handwriting activities during the first quarter of the school year to addressed their difficulties to develop the necessary skills in writing that includes; visual perceptual skills, and fine motor skills, encouraging teachers to utilize the proposed handwriting activities. Moreover, there is a need to use developed rubic to established the level of effectiveness of the handwriting activities since it enhances pupils' handwriting and consider the challenges encountered by the teacher in the implementation of handwriting activities to improve the handwriting of the pupils.