Why insist on joined up writing?

[fivesacrowd]

Parents night last night for ds who's in p7 (Scotland). He's doing really well and teacher was talking about preparing for high school and saying he needs to work on his presentation. I thought she meant his maths work, straight columns of numbers etc, but she was referring to his handwriting saying that the curriculum for excellence requires joined up hand writing so instead of the legible printing we have from him at the moment, he's to work on his totally illegible scrawl. I thought the CofE was all about individuality so why would it focus on this? Help me fight his corner pls lovely teachers.

Once mastered it's much quicker to write joined up than to print, so will be invaluable in exams in the future.

It is much quicker to write, and also helps to spell correctly, because your hand 'remembers' how the whole word is formed, rather than the individual letters.

However, P7 seems a little late to be trying to convert him - why haven't they taught him to write joined up before now? (I don't mean it is too late to master it; just why not before?)

I don't know about between the jump from primary to secondary in Scotland, but have found for ds that the difference in the amount of writing required is massive - if he didn't have neat joined up writing, I think he'd really struggle to keep up.

My hand writing is/was a scrawl. I did cursive from year 6-8 and then opted out. There's no point writing (a tiny bit) quicker if no one can read a word you've written. (I survived school and university!)

It is very good for kids with Learning Difficulties as it can help with letter reversal and it helps with spelling as the children physically learn the link shapes between the letters. And it's quicker. I think I've heard of theories to do with cognitive development - something to do with the flow of writing/thought but am not sure...

Totally agree, OP. At our school they start wasting time with cursive in kindergarten. The worst part is that they are teaching a style of cursive in which you form most of the letters separately, so it isn't even quicker than printing!

If my children were going to grow up to be professional thank-you-note writers, then fine. Otherwise I can't see why they are forced to waste so much time with this. I don't write in cursive and the only person I know who does is my DM. They'd be better off teaching this generation of children to type at an early age.

I just want pupils to be able to write quickly and legibly. I don't care how thry do it. My view is unpopular with some.

My left hander boy age 7 writes legibly but not prettily.
Joined up just is not working for him at all.
Takes him a bloody age to write joined up and his 'content' suffers big time.
I am another who does not care if he never writes joined up as long as he can write at a reasonable speed legibly.

No concerns about his spelling, he finishes all his work in class despite not joining his letters. Dd's in S3 and she says her teachers never see her handwriting as everything is typed up before its submitted for marking. I'm just not sure if it was the only negative the teacher could come up with on parents night (part if the whole two stars and a wish guff) or if it really is an issue and something I should be trying to work on with him at home. Both dd have beautiful handwriting and I've always put his spidery scrawl done to him being a boy.

Thanks for checking CfE euphemia, he's meeting all his success criteria in his language work so the content is fine, it's legible I'm just not sure it's that attractive (depends on the reader I suppose)

It is true that with joined writing you can write fast; in my case so fast that nobody else can read it, so I have to print if it is to be for anyone else's benefit.

However, I wouldn't worry as I have thought joined writing overrated since I had a schoolfriend who didn't join as she wasn't taught this at primary, but it didn't stop her getting 8 good O levels, 3 A grades at A level (very unusual in the early 70's) followed by a first class honours degree. All in the days when just about everything was hand written.

DS doesn't join; he did try for a bit in primary before reverting to printing, and nobody at secondary school ever mentioned it. Most of their longer pieces of work and coursework will be produced on computer anyway.

our school starts teaching joined up writing from P3 - in earlier primaries they do the letter with a flick at the end and then in later primaries the flick is used to join the letters together.