New way of forming letters - Is it a pile of cr*p or am I missing something?

[Manictigger]

Last week I went to dd's parents' evening and the teacher (Y1) explained to us about how the children are learning about a new way of forming their letters. Apparently you have a 'flick' at the start of some letters and it is supposed to help them with joined up writing. Teacher rolled eyes as she explained it and said she was having to relearn to write along with the children. I'm baffled by it frankly because in reception the children learnt that most letters start at the top (now they mostly appear to start at the bottom) and I thought that with joined up writing you tended to start the new letter according to where the one before finished (IYSWIM)!

Mrz, anyone, please help, am I being really stupid here?

If you want to take notes joined handwriting is usually much faster.
Good handwriting is a tool that's why many employers are now asking applicants to submit handwritten applications

Should schools insist on cursive if a child is obviously uncomfortable and struggling with it after a reasonable amount of time?

Well no, they shoudn't insist on it if a child is struggling with it. Time to try a new method then.

We actually had a mum insist that we didn't ask her son to write in cursive handwriting as it was too difficult. He was referred to an Occupational Therapist who recommended that he be taught cursive handwriting and within a term not only had his handwriting improved but he had made 2 sub levels progress in writing

by that I mean he was writing more, the content was better and his spelling had improved.

voices.yahoo.com/10-reasons-teach-cursive-writing-first-print-4235867.html

Cursive is faster and therefore very useful when taking an accurate note of what is being said is important.

I think the general feeling that cursive is difficult/unnecessary/crazy is mostly due to it having been out of fashion for a while, so that it is not necessarily the norm for some parents. Was also very surprised that some people thought learning to read resources would need to be changed if the school decided to switch handwriting style and that children would be confused by writing in a different way from how the books are printed.

Where I grew up we started off (and still start) to read and write in printed capitals, then after a month or so move on to cursive. Everybody learns it, nobody prints in lower case and there does not seem to be more confusion re the letters. When a new letter is introduced, children learn it has 4 shapes: printed upper case, printed lowercase, cursive capital and normal cursive. End of story....

www.peterson-handwriting.com/Publications/PDF_versions/AdvantageCursiveRef.pdf

France has it nailed. You can tell someone is French just by their handwriting. Everyone does it. Everyone is on board and they all know how to do it...parents and children.
I'm no fan of 'one size fits all' (an entire Nation!!!) but there is something to be said for French handwriting.

If you write faster you will probably find that your writing joins up a bit more than usual, anyway. Generally, people write as fast as they need to, don't they?

At my DD's school they just learnt the end flick, and started joined up writing straight away.

At DS's school, they learnt the up flick and the end flick, and also had to join their letters straight away.

My experience was that the up flick was confusing, particularly in words with like "fire", where the i joins to the r above the line, and not on it.

And this thread would NEVER be on Lanetdumamans as no one would dispute it.

our school does NOT teach this. The head of foundation stage said they had tried it, but after a few years they reverted to the basic letter formation first (although thye have small flick at end, and i and t are taught with curved bottom, not as a straight vertical)

They reverted back as the children just couldn't manage to learn good letter formation with all the add ons. They are easy enough to add on later.

I know that one of the reasons for doing it is that you learn a word as a whole word, and not as the seperate letters, because you as soon as you are writing words, you join the letters together.
Thw whole word writing is supposed to help spelling.

I think there is some confusion of terms here too. All joined up writing is cursive. There is just a great variety of styles to choose form. The very curly loopy cursive is what my mum learnt. I learnt a much simpler, more rounded form of cursive (called nelsons handwriting) which is similar to today's writing

I taught in a school where this style was introduced from the word go in Reception. As the Reception teacher it was bloody hard work and children did get confused with some letters that didn't resemble the printed form at all like z, f, and x. It delayed their initial writing skills somewhat, but we did find that by the time children were in Y1 and Y2 the previous issues with handwriting and children's reluctance to join which were seen with the old handwiriting scheme were virtually non-existent and any initial delay in writing was made up for by better progress in Y1/Y2.

Interesting. I remember those old fashioned handwriting books with tracing paper. Quite enjoyed them as a child. Anyone recommend any cursive handwriting books to practise from at home (in keen moments....)?

I wasn't saying DCs shouldn't learnt to do cursive writing, I just can't see why primary schools get so hung up on rules and styles and you may/ may not loop this or that letter.

By Xmas of Y7 every DC has given up and developed their own scrawl, which may or may not actually be properly cursive.
DSIS wasn't. Mine was, but totally illegible.

Our school introduced this mid-way through Reception (after he'd spent ages learning totally different printed letter formation). DS (5.7) is now in Y1 and they're really pushing cursive letter forms, although at this stage only with entry and exit strokes and not actually joining letters. His writing is a mixture of cursive, printed and capital letters, but his teacher says it's normal at this stage and not to worry. It doesn't entirely make sense to me that the letters they are learning to read look so different from the ones they are learning to write, I have to admit. We didn't start cursive writing until J3 (so Y5 now), I'm sure.

Ds is in Y1 and his school teach cursive handwriting. He's not doing too bad, he's now started to join words in a cursive hand, the teacher said they usually take a step back when begin joining up the letters into words but that this was to be expected. She's really happy with his progress so far.

I don't think it's a bad thing. I remember being much older than 6 before I started to tackle joined up handwriting.

We use Nelson for our handwriting scheme - we do the flick at the end of the letter but not the lead stroke.

For what it is worth I am 45 and went to a rather oldfashioned convent school. I was taught a VERY cursive and joined style, it was all loopy and every letter was joined - the b and the p were 'open' a bit like the French style. It was bloody murder. My books looked like a drunken spider had rambled across the page! When I hit secondary school (the same school mar you) my History teacher took one look at my notes and told me to give up joining and just print. My writign speed and neatness drastically improved. Over the years I developed my own joined writing, all my joins are natural and I am often complimented on my neat, legible and speedy writing......

My nephew 5, has started to do this "flick" stuff, and I am guessing my ds is doing it to but it was never mentioned. Whatever happened to magic pencil (might make myself sound really old mentioning that )? I caught on with that really quickly and then the cursive came naturally after.

Have to say the cursive 'f' is completely different to the way I knew it to be but then I am old school!

My school uses a totally unique style which looks beautiful but obviously has no resources for teachers to fall back on

grinn ...magic pencil www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/cvc/magicpencil/index.shtml

It's not 'new'.All my Dc learned joined up right from the start.The eldest is 17 now . They all develop their own style eventually

i don't actually see whygood handwriting is important to employers ?
I almost never handwrite anything for anybody other than myself.

I expect it's important to have neat legible handwriting for when you want to leave shopping lists with 'naice ham' on in a trolley for unsuspecting Imagine the shame if someone posted about a list which was illegible