Teaching Fully Cursive Script - has anyone dropped it?

[blushbabybambu]

All this forced cursive writing in Reception is beginning to get to me, so this week we did a little experiment at home and found that a Sasson-style script (as used in the Jolly Phonics stuff) is way faster and more legible than a fully joined-up script.
Then I hear today that one local school is quietly dropping the teaching of fully cursive because, having taught it exclusively for the past few years, they found it did not have any benefits. In fact it just confused the poor tots in Reception and put them off writing.
Has anyone else either had their school drop fully-joined writing, or have any parents successfully put the case for a Sassoon style?

When you say a local school dropped it - was it an infant school?

The best age at which cursive is introduced is debatable. But to actually teach cursive at some age, and to expect kids to write in cursive in KS2 is not normally debated.

We teach Jolly Phonics style script in reception and Y1 and move onto cursive in Y2. I think in reception they need to learn individual letters although we do teach digraphs and trigraphs as a joined unit

Our school does the same as mrz's school.

dd1 can now write beautifully in cursive (Y3) if she has to, but will never, ever use it by choice...interesting.

My son was taught the basic style first and then moved on to cursive. Well, I say moved on, but he still hasn't really (Yr5) so when my DD started learning cursive from the start at reception I thought it was a good idea. It seemed sensible to start as you mean to go on, rather than teach one style and then attempt to change it 18months later.

But now I wonder - teaching all the letters with the same start point, as you have to do with cursive, has pitfalls in getting good understanding of the different letters. Her writing looks beautiful at a glance (Yr2) but look closer and it's quite muddled with a lot of half written letters as she has already done the link into the next letter too early. Hmm -interesting!

I actually thing being able to print clearly is a very useful skill. I'm surprised that so many schools seem to introduce cursive in R. I would expect them to print individual letters clearly first.

Our old school used to teach cursive in reception but they dropped that as they felt that it took longer for reluctant writers to write as they were overwhelmed with the cursive. Now they teach print (with flicks) in Reception and start teaching joined up in juniors.

Our current school was surprised that dd could write joined up when she joined Y4.

Tbh I find it strange that schools encourage joined up in Reception when worksheets and reading books have printed font. In real life most people (like the parents) don't use joined up plus there is no push for joined up in secondary so I can't help but wonder who decided it's good for primary?

Isn't 'joined up writing' a National Curriculum tick box somewhere.

DD's school do it in reception; all it has succeeded in doing is putting her right off writing when she was printing sentences before. I'm not a fan.

Joined up writing is an important skill but it doesn't need to be introduced before the child is developmentally ready

I wish the school where I work would drop it. I really struggle to do it myself and have to constantly look up at the charts around the classroom, just to write a comment on their work. Now precursive, on the other hand, I can do like a pro.

Also, when I did 'handwriting' as a child we made all these lovely patterns and used different colours, all to develop a nice, fluid style. Ds, on the other hand, has to write line after line of one letter. It is tedious in the extreme.

Don't get me started

I have real doubts about it to. My elder was left with real a misunderstanding about which part was the actual letter, and which just the lead in and lead out. I find it irritating that he starts the word "and" for instance down on the line rather than at 1pm which seems to me more rational, and certainly more legible. I just didn't bother with my second, kicking off on a simple ball and stick, then urging flicks, then pointing out where certain letters "love to join up". I am still unconvinced how pointful it is to join on from certain letters (eg b) in any situation at all.

Thanks for the replies. It's interesting to see I'm not alone in thinking that teaching Reception fully cursive may well be counter-productive. I've seen it turn my little one right off attempting to write as part of playing outside of school hours. I would have thought that at Infant age, getting them to reliably produce letter formations, and to feel proud of that achievement would be the most important thing. It's equally interesting that there is so little talk about schools dropping it. A target of 'legible and quick' would be a sufficient standard whilst leaving the style up to the child, but if the EYFS / KS1 tick box says 'joined up writing' does it leave the school unable to follow a different path?

the EYFS/KS1 "tick box" definitely does NOT say children need to use joined up handwriting

EYFS goal is ^Holds a pencil and uses it effectively to form recognisable
letters, most of which are correctly formed and KS1 is letters generally correctly shaped but inconsistencies in orientation, size and use of upper/lower case letters clear letter formation, with ascenders and descenders distinguished, generally upper and lower case letters not mixed within words^

There was a thing on QI a while back where they said that 'joined up writing' was no quicker than any other kind and had no impact on spelling or anything else. It is purely a style that has no other benefit.

Reception? My ds1 started learning cursive in nursery! He is in reception now.
I hate cursive script. He is far more focused on getting the leading in stroke and the kick off to the right thamn he is in the actual letter

Most paediatric OTs recommend cursive over print because it requires less effort for most children. IME many children who complain that writing physically hurts find cursive better and can write for longer without pain.

I'm doing a study on this for my MEd. There's research on how handwriting is taught (eg, in discrete lessons, by modelling, etc.) but (unless I have missed it) there are no studies about the impact of teaching letters with instrokes/fully cursive as opposed to print. There's some research from the US, but their styles are quite different to those that we use in the UK.
My school is trialling pre-cursive with instrokes; at the same time, the school next to us is considering dropping this and going back to print with outstrokes ('flicks').

www.ldonline.org/spearswerling/The_Importance_of_Teaching_Handwriting

donpotter.net/PDF/Cursive%20First.pdf
www.helium.com/items/1762335-educat-teach-communicat-learn-child-thought-brain-develop-cognitive-skill-ability-school

Thanks for those links mrz. I'm currently wading through hundreds (OK, about 20, but feels like hundreds) of academic papers at the moment trying to do my literature review. (I'm now thinking I'd like to turn this into a Phd... longitudinal study of the teaching of handwriting in YR/KS1; and whether initial methods of teaching (print vs pre-cursive/cursive) has an impact later on in the school.)

HalfSpam (great name btw) - what does the research about teaching handwriting conclude? Is there a best way of doing it, do different children work better with different methods, or is a mix of ways the best way?

As I said above, DD was printing fine, and then has pretty much given up writing after school started trying to teach her cursive (she types for the moment instead) and I think I'll need to do some work with her to clear up the mess as they aren't really interested.

www.gtce.org.uk/tla/rft/eng_fr0708/eng_fr0708cs/casestudy4/
ecrp.uiuc.edu/v3n1/marr.html
www.peterson-handwriting.com/Publications/PDF_versions/AdvantageCursiveRef.pdf
but there are literally hundreds of research papers