Teaching joined-up writing in Reception, before the children can print

[Artichokes]

Is this common now?

My DD's reception teacher insists they learn joined-up. Even when they learn individual letter formation itswith all the loopy bits as if it will be joined-up. It's really much harder than print writing and seems crazy as they are learning to read print fonts and can't read joined-up.

Anyone know the theory behind this approach?

Never heard of it - DD1 is learning joined up writing (doing her homework on it right now) in year 1, having done printing in nursery and reception.

In our school they learn the letters with all the leaders etc for later joining, rather than 'ball and stick' letters. This makes the letters more complicated to learn in the first place. The idea is that they will not have to relearn later and also some words, such as 'one' or 'the' are not phonetic and are therefore better learned as a unit. It has caused quite some arguments with parents.

They do this in our school. Totally mad, IMO.

Apparently the theory (as explained to us when ds1 was in infants') is that being able to write joined-up will enable them to write more fluidly, faster, getting their thoughts down on paper without disturbing the flow of their thoughts. Personally I think that that is a load of claptrap. I think 'all or most childrenwrite in cursive" is probably a box to tick on an inspection form, and therefore the school feel under pressure to get that box tucked asap.

It's been a disaster for my dc. Ds1 is in Y5, and most of his class has such bad handwriting that his teacher has had to teach them letter formation from scratch, all over again. Both dd and ds1 have dreadful penmanship, neither has been taught to hold a pencil properly, their hands are cramped, their writing barely legible. They love writing, but just can't do it for very long because it is physically exhausting.

What a waste!

The thing is, they don't need to learn ball and stick at all! Surely the more logical pre-cursive would be to learn the letters with llead-outs, rather than lead-ins? Lead-outs are more logical, they fit with the flow of most letters, and are far more legible than lead-ins, especially when each letter has both lead-ins and lead-outs. Ds changed schools mid-year, in Reception, and that was how he had been taught letters in his first school.

My ds1 is in the nursery and is learning this
My ds1 is 3 and he is bringing homework back learning letters with the leading in strokes etc, is madness!

I really don't understand the point of view that doing a joining stroke on a letter is so much more complicated than forming the letter without one that a young child is going to find it immeasurably more difficult. So far as I can see, the problem is not with being taught to do this, it's with lack of supervision in checking the letters are being formed in the right way in the first place - PrettyCandles' children would probably be just as rubbish at printing letters as they are at joining them up if they weren't supervised properly when learning how to do it. And at least with a joining stroke, you know where you are meant to have started forming the letter (at the joining stroke), rather than forming it in all the silly ways I've seen children print their letters. And it's not as if joining up letters was the cause of PrettyCandles' children holding their pencils wrongly.

As for writing, if you find writing difficult and therefore do odd sized letters and have poor spacing between words, my experience is that your writing is more legible if you have at least joined up the letters that are supposed to form part of the same word - at least, then, you know where one word ends and the next begins. And why is it easier to learn to print one year and then be told that is no longer acceptable the next year? Some children get hopelessly confused by being taught one thing and then, as soon as they've mastered that, being told they have to do it another way. Cursive writing is much faster in the long run, so why not start out with it? It's not as if reading and writing are the same thing - no-one forms their "a" like the computer-printed "a" when they "print" using their own handwriting, do they? So they aren't even learning to write like the books they are reading even when they are printing their letters.

ie I think it's a good thing when teachers start out the way the mean to go on, so long as they teach it properly.

Yes, I agree that the supervising was not good. The feeling I got from the school was that the point was to get the dc writing cursive at all costs, asap.

I used to watch my dc struggling to form their letters: they would get stuck in an up-and-down groove, unable to break out of it to form the loop, or vice-versa get stuck in the loop, unable to break out and form the vertical part of the letter. They found it physically and intellectually confusing. They were made to join their letters before they had grasped how to form them.

What gets me about the lead-ins, is that when you write fully cursive you don't lead in to each letter the same way every time, whereas lead-outs are far more consistent. Forcing letters following r, v, w, x to lead in upward from the line does nothing for legibility. b and k look the same. Letters following o lead in from the top.

It's a mess, IMO, made worse by forcing children who are not ready into cursive, and de-emphasising penmanship.

Letters following o should lead in from the top.

Learning a cursive style, with the "flick" is the best way for children to begin letter formation and has many benefits over the ball and stick method we were probably taught in school. If children are taught correctly they will form most letters in a single movement in a smooth action which requires less effort for small hand than a series of strokes. Many schools use a style developed by Rosemary Sassoon, a handwriting expert, which is designed to be easy to read and write and moves easily into a joined script when children are ready. www.mantex.co.uk/2009/07/17/handwriting-of-the-twentieth-century/
Personally I find teaching the lead in stroke difficult for younger children and don't see it as necessary from the beginning.

What is important is that children are taught how to form letters correctly -where to start - which direction to go - where to end and it can't be done by giving a child the letters to trace over unless an adult watches to see they are doing it right. It is very easy to produce a sheet of traced letters that have been formed wrongly but look fine.

Prettycandles it certainly isn't a tick box for inspectors.

My kids were taught cursive from Kindy in Australia. Came back here and told not to use it. I felt it was a mistake. DS never got b and d's mixed up and now he does. It is way easier to move to joined up from cursive and I also think helps spelling.

My DD (6.4), who is in the first year of a French primary school, learned to write in cursive straight away. This involved a lot of practice during Grande Section (third and final year of école maternelle) and super intensive practice during the first couple of months of the first year of primary.

She can now write in cursive very well, very neatly and very quickly, with a fountain pen or a pencil. What's not to like?

The old system is like learning two sets of letter formation. Surely it's better to just learn one?

I don't know much about early letter formation and how it moves on. But dd's school seem to teach joining early but without the lead in strokes that lots of schools have. Her writing has gone from pretty much a standing start in sept to being mostly printing with flicks but starting to join. The good thing I think they do is that they seem to start joining when they're ready rather than when the teacher's ready. The handwriting seems pretty good. They do seem to have high standards in whatever stage the child's at-rubbing out seems to be a feature but I don't know whether that happens in free writing or just practice.

We form letters using end-flicks until year 2 when we start to join. How do young cursive writers start words? With the lead-in every time? As mentioned as well, lead-ins will vary depending on the previous letter so it must be just as confusing to teach one way and then vary it when the previous letter is a b, o, v etc.

Ds2 is in reception and learning cursive; ds1 is in yr3 and is also now learning cursive. He is getting frustrated and avoiding writing; he is reluctant to attempt homework as his teacher has
said it should be written in cursive. It is definitely a huge backward step for him, as writing has always been his biggest area of weakness.

Ds2's writing is (dare I say it) already as good as ds1's. So for us this method is working.

It is often harder for children to learn joined handwriting if they have been taught to print.

I beg to differ - my daughter learnt to print and is teaching herself to join up her writing now. Dear god isn't there more to be doing at age 4?

SORRY looking back on it I think my daughter was taught how to form letters with a flick etc so that's probably why she's able to join up her handwriting now.

Joined up writing means extra points when doing SATs. Could that be the reason that it is pushed?

My dd/ds1 learned to print in Reception then learned joined up in Y3 and have great handwriting. Ds2 is in Reception and struggling with learning the flicks etc (school has changed policy )

It helps with letter formation. Dd (6) can write beautifully, but starts many of the letters in the wrong place. We banged on at her for ages about the need to start them in the right place but she could not understand why. It has made it harder for her to learn cursive script as she has already over-learned the incorrect letter formations. If she had learned cursive script from reception, she would have understood the importance of not only making the letter look right, but actually doing it in the right way.

DD is in reception and has flicks on the ends of her letters. Don't think she has lead-ins though.

DD1 realy struggled as in reception each letter had a lead in and a lead out, which meant that there were extra squiggles throughout each word where letters were joined from the lead out of the previous one, to the lead in of the next one, rather than flowing. Makes so much more sense to do flicks at the end of a letter which then flow to the starting point of the next one. But then if you've never learnt where the starting point of say "o" is (because of the insistence that every letter start from the line), you can't write smoothly.

In our school they learn printing with the loops in year R but then when they go into year 3 they are expected to do joined up whether they can or not. IMO it would have been better to learn joined up from the start.

Yes, I can confirm that when our son started Reception last year (which was in North-West part of Essex), they started straight away with joined-up writing and NEVER learnt to write print letters or capital letters..