Joined up handwriting year 1

[Northlondonma]

My daughter is young August born in year 1. She has had her first homework over Xmas with 7 pages of words she has to write out multiple times in joined up handwriting. She is just about mastering writing let alone joining it all up! She is struggling with it but is this normal for 5 year olds to be writing joined up?? I'm sure I didn't learn that until early secondary school (if memory serves correct!). Seems a push to get them to do this so early when they have literally not even mastered writing coherently!

There was a school here that did joined up writing from primary one (now closed down) and they were slated for it by the inspectors. My DD got one of the pupils aged 10 and he couldn't write legibly.

If a child is regularly using a dynamic tripod grasp without needing to be reminded to do so, there is nothing to say that beginning to use a cursive (joined) handwriting style could do any harm. In fact, the use of cursive writing has been shown to support children with their spelling, allowing them to write familiar words with automaticity and accuracy. (Children who have dyslexia, and who do not have handwriting difficulties arising from hypermobility, dyspraxia, etc., are encouraged to use joined writing in their work). This may be why your daughter's teachers have set the joined writing of whole words as holiday homework - either to support the class in learning the spellings of specific words to be copied (depending on what the words are) or to set her on the track to begin to use cursive writing with the intention of helping them to learn to 'remember' spelling / letter strings with greater automaticity.

The problem with going about this as a whole class activity/ approach is that it's wholly inappropriate for those children who haven't acquired/ developed the most appropriate handwriting grasp - or who physically won't be able to.

I'd suggest that you have a look at your daughter's handwriting grasp first of all, as this is key.

A dynamic tripod grasp is optimal in order to be able to join letters in a joined, rhythmic and fluid manner: www.google.co.uk/search?q=children+handwriting+grasp&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#facrc=_&imgrc=6_Rda4JbK5geXM%253A%3Bundefined%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmissmancy.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F07%252Fgrasps.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmissmancy.com%252Fcategory%252Fhandwriting-coloring-skills%252Fgrasp%252Fpage%252F2%252F%3B600%3B307

This is unusual in a child of five years old. There are plenty of wonderful exercises and activities on one of the the sites recommended by Ferguson (teach handwriting.co.uk) that will strengthen and support the fine motor skills and muscles of the hand and wrist:

www.teachhandwriting.co.uk/handwriting-warm-up-exercises.html 2. www.teachhandwriting.co.uk/more-activities-help-develop-handwriting-skills.html

Tips to encourage use/ formation of tripod grasp: www.teachhandwriting.co.uk/tips-forming-tripod-grip.html

I'm going on about the importance of the handwriting grasp as its such a difficult area to corrct / adjust once a child has become accustomed to holding a pencil incorrectly.

It is important to note that there are many children who have hypermobility in the finger joints. For these children, using the usually recommended dynamic tripod grasp would cause them to have aching fingers, strain and to find writing for more than a few minutes at a time to be very difficult. These are the children who need to be allowed to adjust their handwriting grasp to suit their comfort. To 'force' these children to use a dynamic tripod grasp is actually rather cruel and highly likely to put them off writing as it'll be very uncomfortable for them after a few minutes. Many handwriting grips can be found for this purpose but these children often 'create' their own handwriting grasp that ought to be accepted if it is comfortable and SUSTAINABLE for them. However, they WOULD really benefit from working hard on the strengthening exercises (1&2) linked above.

Current thinking is that a dynamic tripod grip isn't necessary/essential for good handwriting.

My ds is August born, now in yr 1 and they are learning pre cursive with flicks and loops. He's still struggling to get all his letters the right way around!
We also have spelling tests every week. One letter the wrong way round is a fail even if correctly formed and placed in the right space.

It's correct that dynamoc tripod grasp isn't essential for good handwriting. However, it is optimal if a child is able to adopt it lends itself best to fluid/ cursive joined writing. Most other handwriting grasps produce either slower, more rigid or jerky movements of the whole hand vs fingers (pincer grip). This can be tiring and necessitate a child to take their own from of rest breaks where they can be seen to shake their hand to relieve the strain caused by a more rigid grasp. Once children are in Year 3 and beyond, the demands placed upon them grows in terms of the amount of writing expected. This is when such difficulties become more apparent and by this time, handwriting grasp is so much harder to change.

Please excuse typos. Tired.
Form vs from, etc.

ds2 is in yr1, and was still struggling with basic letter recognition and formation (due to SNs) and still they have been insisting on them using joined up writing since beginning of year 1. He hasn't got a clue, and while I've been trying to assist somewhat (based on the information sent home), some of the letters are ridiculously awkward, not identifiable in the cursive format, and quite frankly it's confusing him. He certainly can't read back the letters once he's written them, for the most part, except the few he uses regularly, like his name. And it's still barely legible.

They're putting in the flicks and tails, but he is trying to write the letter and go back and add the flicks and tails afterwards (as often he's approaching the letter from the wrong starting point or wrong direction).

Quite a few years ago I tutored children who were behind with spelling. Back then, extra points were given on the 7+ SATs for 'joining up', so all the younger children I saw were under huge pressure to join their writing regardless of how they formed the letters (or spelled the words). One lad would 'write' the words—no idea how to form the letters—and then draw a line along the bottom of all the letters to join them up! I suspect that the OP's DD is a victim of the legacy of this target-driven madness.
Some Y1 children have sufficiently good manual dexterity to cope with thrown into the deep-end of cursive script. For those that don't, the best free resource that I have come across for teaching good pre-cursive letter formation is here: prometheantrust.org/admin/files/tracing.pdf

Is this a private school? A prep? Cos that's insane!

My ds is being taught cursive handwriting (reception) which I assume will become joined up as he gets older. It is a bloody pain for him as he gets upset as harder to form the letters plus it doesn't quite match what you see in a book! Sometimes he rebels and uses the usual print he learnt at preschool

Ds2's school is using The Write Path by Julie Palmer as a handwriting programme. Some of the letters are not your "normal" cursive shape, and a few (p and b for example) don't actually join up and close the "o" part of the letter, so the "b" looks rather like an "h".

Isn't it called pre-cursive not cursive if the letters aren't yet joined?

DS was joining his writing by Yr 1. DD is in reception and is already doing flicks and now writes her name joined up. I think it is standard to get them to join up their writing quickly at their school. I just thought it was the norm.

DS1 (now 13yo) has some fine motor problems and has always found writing difficult.

His (German and excellent) OT, who we first met when Ds was around 8yo was furious with the way UK schools teach children to print first and then to join up, as if they're completely different skills. He felt strongly that they should be taught cursive/joined up writing from day 1.

He was even more skathing about pen licences....

Yes catkind most schools teach a pre cursive style first before moving onto fully cursive writing. It's very unusual for schools in the UK to teach printing.

Thanks mrz, was getting confused by some of the posts here. When I was at school "printing" was used to mean capital letters - does it now just mean normal letters without flicks? Several of DS' friends' schools and his cousins' schools do printing if that's what it's called. Reassuring to hear it's unusual as we're hoping to move soon and didn't want DS to have to change back.

At my DS' school they teach cursive script from Year R. He has started to naturally join some letters because of this, many letters he still ignores in a cursive sense and writes them as print.

If he got this h/w in year 1 I'd think it fair enough, but if your DD has not been taught from the word go in this way, I'd think it a little challenging. She will presumably have been taught to write for a year; if that wasn't cursively she may have to change learned patterns of writing, and that's going to take a bit of time.

My ds2, currently yr 1, has learnt cursive from reception and despite his left-handedness slowing him down for a while (needing to lift his hand to check what he's written, pushing down too hard and taking longer to write) his handwriting is now starting to look lovely, and definitely nicer than mine was at his age. As a parent, I am definitely all for it and can see the advantage of introducing it from the start. My eldest started cursive much later and still has to be reminded to join letters together in yr 7!

OP whilst some might think that Christmas holiday homework is mean , lots of practice sheets like that can only be beneficial.

It seems to be the thing to teach a cursive script with every letter starting with an upwards sweep from the line resulting imo in a more fussy style that is both harder to read and write. I preferred the more plain style where each letter was just taught with a little flick on the end and this led to joining most letters - Nelson was the scheme widely used. I would be interested in whether research supports one of these styles over the other or if it is just fashion.

Print often does mean use block capitals (on forms for example) but generally it means resembling the style of print found in books. Most schools teach a style that is easy to join once children know how to form individual letters and how they join to others.
Many schools teach a style with an exit stroke first then teach how to combine letters to produce a continuous flowing script.

Some countries (US for example) teach block capitals first as thus is considered easier.

My children are at school in France. They were first taught to print capitals, then taught cursive directly at the start of Primary (age 6). It's not the same as print letters with flicks though - the letters are formed totally differently. I am totally won over by this method. It's no harder to learn when they are taught that from the outset, and it's actually much more helpful in terms of differentiating similar letters: e.g. b and d are formed in very different ways, as are p and q; it's impossible to get the s or r the wrong way round, etc.
I've never heard of it being to free up their minds for creative writing though. Where did you learn that Mrz? Creative writing seems to have a very low priority here from all I can see.

www.schoolsworld.tv/node/1736

Thanks for all the replies! This is a state school but outstanding and with great sat results. Maybe this is why they are pushing them to do this now. Another friend mentioned that this is a Gove legacy but I think he may get the blame for everything these days warranted or not! Still she has been practising and is now so much better and quicker and it is actually helping as before almost none of her letters were the same size and now they are more uniform. She seems to be picking it up quite quickly after the false start and now that she will actually sit down for 20 mins a day to do it!

It has nothing to do with Gove and test results

DD has done cursive from the start. I would say it has taken longer for her to have near writing but at 8 she has lovely cursive writing.

Her cousins who go to different schools don't use cursive. I'm not sure why it isn't standard!