Cursive writing confidence - Y1

[vladthedisorganised]

DD is 5. She had a great start to Y1 and was really enthusiastic - her teachers have praised her for attempting more complicated things and she seemed to be getting on well until recently. She hasn't had any confidence issues before now.
The school advises 10 minutes of literacy homework and 10 minutes of Maths homework a night, in addition to 10 minutes of phonics and reading the school reading books. She enjoys the phonics well enough, loves Maths and manages the reading OK once she gets started. (there is no way we can fit everything in to the 10 minutes though - apart from Maths which she whizzes through)

The issue is literacy: they get 6 spellings to learn each week, plus 5 'sight words' and need to compose each of these into a sentence by the end of the week. In addition, spellings need to be written out each day on a worksheet and a 'mini-test' is advised each night. All spellings are tested at the end of the week.
It's also a combined literacy and handwriting exercise so they need to write everything in their 'best cursive', with points awarded/ deducted for non-cursive writing.

Sadly, far from encouraging DD to give it a go, she's started to go to pieces completely on writing anything. She insists she 'can't do' spelling at all and is starting to tell me that she's 'not as good as the others' because 'her handwriting is always wrong' (spelling seems OK though, but any spellings not written in cursive count as incorrect apparently). I know this isn't coming from the teachers who seem at pains to encourage the children, but I'm really not sure how to build up her confidence again while still meeting the school's requirements. (It's now so bad that she won't even print letters at home). I don't want to spend hours upsetting her, but I don't want to say 'poor you, I know you don't like it so you don't have to do it again' either.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to encourage her? It also doesn't help that the 'handwriting practice' books I've found don't use the same cursive style that DD is supposed to be using...

Personally I would stop and talk to the teachers about it. 5 year olds are too young to be getting upset and in a state about homework.

Ridiculous amount of homework for a 5 year old. We only do reading, probably manage 5x a week. No way would I sit my 5 year old down for 30+ minutes of homework every day.

Wow - the amount of homework does seem high - and I am comparing it to independent schools considered as "hot houses".

Dd2 also in Y1 gets 1 page over the weekend (can be math, English, or a little project - like "collect and draw autumn things on your autumn walk this weekend"). She also gets 5 spellings/sentences on Mon - due on Fri. We don't do daily spellings - instead do it twice during the week. So, not more than 10 min at a go. We do school reading most days, unless she is too tired.

I would speak to the teacher. Homework is not meant to crush the child, it is counter-productive if it does.

When did they start learning connected writing? Sounds like they started off non-connected? If so - it is way to early to insist on all words to be in connected writing, and to penalise children for not doing it yet.

Does cursive mean joined-up? If so, none of my DD's Year 1 class are doing that yet. DD's handwriting, if you can call it that, is still massive and all over the place. I'm not worried, she'll get there. Progress isn't linear.

I also 'own' a five year old who found the start of yr1 very hard. I took the pressure off and wrote notes to the teachers telling them that writing sentences for the spelling words was quite beyond her because she was trying to get to grips with cursive writing (It helped that I know the teacher because he also taught dd1). It worked really well and she is now so keen to improve her writing that she sits down by herself to write things.
I'd try to encourage her but not force her to do her homework