Teacher discouraging joined up writing

[sunnynight]

Dc (year 2) was taught to write in pre cursive in Reception. He moved schools end of Reception. At his next (current) school kids were writing in print. He had to either start writing in print or carry on writing in pre cursive unguided by teachers, which he preferred. I tried to support at home with the 'joined letters' app, but at school he was pretty much left on his own devices.

At the parents meeting I had comments about his writing being lovely but a bit slow at times. So last year we slowly moved to cursive to help with the speed. Meanwhile his classmates (and teachers) were using print.

His writing is not super, but it's his only writing. He joins his letters. We've practiced a lot on his app to do this correctly.

He's started year two this Sept and his new teacher, apparently is teaching the whole class pre cursive.
My dc has told me a few times now that's she's been telling the children off to not joined their writing up. I'm not sure she's aware that my dc is not new to pre cursive/ cursive.

We still carry on practicing writing at home and he's telling me he doesn't want to write in cursive because he doesn't want his teacher to be cross. I feel it's wrong to take him back to pre cursive.

I'll really appreciate some advice with this. I'm not sure what to tell the teacher without showing her my disappointment that she's not supporting him at the stage he is. Thank you!

Speak with the teacher. She won't be aware your child was already taught precursive and has been writing joined up for a while. Hopefully once she is aware, she will notice what stage he is at, and set appropriate work.

I would have hoped she's aware though. He was the only one writing in cursive at the beginning of the year, and it's been a few weeks now.

Thank you for your reply!

She will have no idea that he's already been through the pre-cursive stages at a previous school and completed them at home. For all she knows, he's jumped to joining straight away and she may be asking children not to do that because, without the pre stages being covered, the resulting joined handwriting is messy.

Just speak with the teacher. You can explain that he was already joining and ask if he's fine to continue with this or whether there are errors in his joining that require him to go back to pre-joining at this point.

This is why I hate precursive! It's a fanny on and only some schools follow it.

Thank you for your replies.

I guess at this stage I was expecting them to focus on spelling and grammar rather than reteach the kids writing a different way to what they have already been taught. We wouldn't have any confusion if they just carried on as last year.

They will be focusing on grammar. They'll also look at spelling, handwriting, creativity, vocabulary, etc.

The school aren't reteaching the kids to write: the teacher is following the handwriting policy/structure of the school and introducing precursive at the point, and in the way in which, is agreed by the school leadership. Your son has been outside that, initially due to him starting his education elsewhere but then due to your choice to continue. It may be that he has transitioned to a cursive script easily enough and already has neat and well-formed handwriting in line with the expectations of the school. However, it might be that his handwriting doesn't meet the standard expected at the joining stage and, as such, he needs to go back to a precursive stage to correct the errors before returning to cursive.

But you won't know if you don't talk to the teacher and ask.

Thank you! I did speak to the teacher. She was v nice about it saying the not-joining-up rule didn't apply to dc and he can continue.

I guess if my dc was told at the time of writing that he's fine to carry on his way, I wouldn't have had to worry/ need to speak to the teacher.
When you're trying to support your dc with a skill and dc tells you the teacher gets very cross about it you panic a bit.