Joined-up writing from Reception, does your school do this?

[fqueenzebra]

DS1's school basically teaches them to write in a sort of tails both sides of the letter way, which (school reckons) will help them learn to do full-blown cursive writing more easily at a later age.

DH & I don't like it. We virtually never use cursive writing; scientists don't. And I'm American, where I was taught that cursive was the only "correct" way to write, but I always had messy writing. I can't believe that Jolly Phonics reckons that cursive is somehow better because it "improves better spelling" (HOW does that work??). Only people with naturally good writing do cursive voluntarily, I reckon. Books -- and computer text, like what I'm writing now, is plain "printing" text. So what is the value of cursive text? It looks very odd when DS1's teacher writes that way, and he doesnt' get much practise reading it because anything else he has to read, like his homework sheets, etc., are all in simple typeface!!

I suppose I'm having a bit of a rant, just wondered what your school does....

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Can't see how doing cursive writing helps with spelling at all. From experience, the more you concentrate on how the letters look, the less you concentrate on how they are spelt.

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Why bother trying to learn printing and then joined up rather than learning joined up to start with

IMHO learn joined up to start with

If I'm ever struggling to spell a word or get a mental block, it comes to me if I just let the word flow in cursive writing. If I was 'printing' it I wouldn't get that flow and I'd still be struggling. D'you know what I mean? THere must be times someone says 'how do you spell x' and you just grab a piece of paper and quickly write it joined up and there it is?

I'm not explaining this very well I know, but that's how it works for me.

And cursive writing looks so much nicer.

Soupdragon - I think that is almost the point actually: that once cursive is mastered it is very fluent, and words are written in one stroke "without thinking about it". So you are less likely to agonise over what letter comes next.

Tbh I'm fairly ambivalent about handwriting full stop. At the boys school they do 'hooks' at the beginning and end of letters from reception, loops (full-blown curly fs, gs etc in yr1), and complete cursive from day 1 in yr2. DS1's writing is quite messy, but legible. DS2's writing is more beautiful. But I think that would be the case if they were printing or doing cursive.

I join some letters, some letters I don't. At school I remember spending hour upon boring hour doing handwriting practice, and patterns, and colouring them in ... but I think that was only something to keep me quiet when I'd finished my work

I do appreciate beautiful handwriting, but I don't think it's important, especially these days.

9yo Dd learned to write with tails and now has very nice handwriting, even though she's left-handed. It was quite a shock to be told that 'ball-and-post' print was out of fashion, when she started school. In fact, her handwriting is probably the best of all my children's, even though she's the youngest.

My bro has the most beautiful looped writing, it's so even it almost looks like a computer font. The only problem is, when you actually try to read it, it's almost indecipherable!

I've done proper cursive italic writing and I can assure you that it does not help with spelling one little bit.

"THere must be times someone says 'how do you spell x' and you just grab a piece of paper and quickly write it joined up and there it is?"

Not exactly, no - Yes I write it down but I don't write it joined up. IIt's easier to check the spelling written because you can see if it looks right but it doesn't need to be cursive or joined up for that, it just has to be your own normal consistent handwriting.

I know what you mean SD - maybe it doesn't work for everyone but I find if I write it quickly and joined up then the word just flows out rather than me having to think about separately writing each letter iyswim. Like I say, maybe that's not the case for everyone.

I do agree with the "whole word momentum" thing - not for spelling, but as benefitting fine motor skills. I do think having learnt cursive ds's use of his hands generally (which was very clumsy - buttons took a year to master) is more fluent, & steadier too.

(And I think his joined-up writing looks sweet.)

DS2 has just come home from reception with his sounds book with the first sound in it which happens to be S. He has no problem with the sound or coming up with words which begin with the sound but completely gave up on the four lines of cursive s's which he was supposed to write on the facing page. The teacher has drawn one on the beginning of each line with the huge kick upwards at the beginning and then a lead in to the letter, if that makes sense. Apart from the fact that it looks horrible, it is about three times as difficult to write as a print s and as ds2 is not the most academic of children and has a will of iron, after several attempts and with me guiding his hand and trying to get him to follow dotted outlines, he simply gave up and cried! For the next 8 weeks we are apparently getting a sound a night and I am dreading it at this point. I see an endless line of unfinished pages of letters building up. The irritating thing is that he can do print letters quite well and that I don't do cursive writing myself so I don't even have the heart to put into the whole thing. Must go and write a note to put in the book now to explain unfinished page!

Am a bit horrified that you have homework in reception, anyway, annh.

our school does cursive from day 1. they say that they think it is easier for them, because it makes it much clearer where the letter forms start and end, so they have much fewer problems with backwards letters, letter malformations eg if a child starts writing a "p" from the bottom of the tail upwards (ends up looking like a lopsided sperm) etc.

I must say my daughter took to it pretty easily half way through reception year (having transferred from a school which did printing to begin with) so I don't have a problem wtih it.

And I don't really understand the general gripe about cursive writing in adulthood - I don't think for a minute it helps spelling or anything but it is undeniably faster! Which I, with my classic canadian curly writing, found a godsend in exams...

Just my humble opinion, but I was never happy about teaching children "full on" cursive style from the beginning of reception.

We would introduce the "end" tail (as Jolly Phonics does), but on the whole, very early letter formation focused generally on reproducing what children were reading, which was not joined up handwriting, but print. IME it was very hard for 4 year olds to tackle "full" cursive. So many were still trying to get a general shape and regularity to their letters, without additional burdens. We would introduce it in Year 1, when generally letter formation is more regular. At this point, I would say, " We are now thinking about being able to write faster, because as we grow up, we have more and more ideas to write down on paper. To do this, we need to start thinking about how we join our letters together".

they do cursive at dd's school from day 1 aswell - not fully joined up but with the tails (like pph explained) - I think it can help especially as the children don't have to think where to start each letter but I'm sure it's all much of a muchness.

Annh - don't let your son get flustered about not being able to write in reception. He's still so little. Dd (now in yr1) solidly refused to write until well into the 3rd term of reception - teacher was not bothered one jot, said loads of little ones get quite defiant about not writing (especially ones like dd who get frustrated very quickly when they find out their writing doesn't look the way they want it to). They took a very hands off approach and told us to do the same and slowly but surely, she came round to wanting to write and has now started to write more freely.

Foxinsocks, thanks for your words of encouragement - much needed after a battle over the letter "a" tonight! Part of the problem as someone else said is that these cursive letters often look nothing like the printed version which they have in the words which they are learning so the cursive "s" does not correspond to the one in the word "see". Am actually more wound up because ds1 did his first year and a half of primary education in a Dutch primary school where there was NO letter work, words, reading or numeracy and school was basically an extension of playgroup with lots of gym and art thrown in. He managed to catch up perfectly well in Yr1 here and is in the top group of his class and I do try to remind myself of that fact when poor ds2 crumples in the face of four more lines of letter formation!

Our infant school started cursive writing a few years ago and I like it
I was worried at 1st but having seen dd1's handwriting which is not good and she was at the school Before cursive writing was introduced and didn't learn to join letters until year 3!!

My twins are now in year 1 and although it's a slow process I can see that by the time they are in year 3 their handwriting will be a lot nicer than dd1's was.

My niece is in year 2 in the same school and her handwriting is lovely now she has been doing it since reception

My eldest has just started this formally in Yr1, but their basic letter formation was obviously designed to fit around joined up writing. I must say, DS1's handwriting is improving rapidly

ahaqhahahah! thoguht of you lot today in the post offic e

dh 9 candian curly like pph) has BOOTIFUL writing aand as I stuck a stamp on his ltter to post it for him the woman behind hte counter said what lovely writing "i" had.

is said it was his and he was candian that was why its so nice - she said "ah i bet he s artistic too isnt he?"

"no " i said , "just canadian"!

The reason we teach cursive writing from Reception age is because if you teach a child to print letters, you have to re-train them later on to join the letters up. It's more difficult to retrain children than to show them how to do it in the first place. If you think about how we print letters, we start the letter at the top above the line. This in itself is difficult for children to know where to begin when hovering above the line, so young children often write way above or through the line. When teaching cursive writing, all the letters start on the line. The advantage is, if your child has been taught cursive writing, when they get to Y2 they can focus on the content rather than the form.

The reason why some people say cursive writing helps spelling, is because some phonics programmes join two letters that make one sound, for example, th, sh, ee, ai, oa, ie, etc. would be written with the two letters joined. Some people believe that this helps the children learn that the letter combinations make one sound.

Haven't read all the replies but ds1's school does this and I don't have a problem with it. Neither does he - it's just letters to him.

i never understood the reason for joining writing in the first place

ACtually, the comment about writing fast in exams is a good one, hadn't thought of that. But they don't have to do that until much older (secondary school).