have there been handwriting changes in the curriculum?

[pinkunicornsarefluffy]

DD is in Year 4 and the teacher is new to the school. She is making the children change the way that they write joined up, and not allowing them to join any letters with tails, or x's.

This goes against last year where they were taught to join all of them. The children are very confused and the teacher has said that if they get it wrong they will have to write the whole page again, not rub it out.

Does anyone know if the curriculum has changed to advise that these letters shouldn't be joined, or if they were taught wrong previously or if they are being taught wrong now?

I'm still not clear how children could achieve level 4 or 5 without meeting level 3 criteria to join.

We follow the Nelson scheme and it's the same. They might be following that. Handwriting has already been given much more importance in the new curriculum and assessments.

Ooh this is interesting. I help out in a Y3 class and they were all doing handwriting the other day and I commented to the teacher how different it all looked. Half of the letters don't join up and the ones that do look completely different to how i would form them. It's so weird, I had to keep checking the examples to see if they were doing it correctly as I would have said it was wrong.

That is totally ridiculous - why on earth should it matter if you join letters up or not as to which level you get? Surely correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and content are far, far more important?

The mark lost for the comma also seems like madness to me - it was in the correct place and it looked like a comma so what is the problem.

I've never been able to do joined up writing at all, I have always printed yet I always had lots of compliments about my handwriting and teachers and examiners loved it as it was very neat and legible.

I have very bright twins they have adhd and asd it's a struggle to get then to put words on paper let alone use cursive writing. This year there teachers are very hard on the cursive writing as they won't be able to get the higher marks they are more than capable of as they won't join up the letters.
There writing is now barley legible and they are both refusing more and more too any writing at all. :-(

Twinkle you may find that writing is much easier if they have an automatic fully joined handwriting style many ADHD and ASD children do IMHE.

Elf there's lots of research that shows the benefit of handwriting for learning compared to printing and using a keyboard.

This is during independent writing tasks so basically has to be second nature. It's worthwhile noticing that this is the EXPECTED level not exceeding. If they're not Doug this they'll be assessed at working below the expected level for year 6

I don't think this is true. A child can be given the expected level without the handwriting element, it's just the greater depth element where it's an issue. It's the only exception to the must meet all criteria to achieve the standard rule.

mrz. I think the answer is the 'best fit' nature of levels. I think in many schools the spelling and handwriting elements were seen as less important.If the content was fine the rest didn't matter. Seems to have caught a few schools out and they've gone into panic mode. Think current trend for cursive in Reception might stem from the same thing.

We've always had a focus on teaching handwriting and presentation of work as have all the schools I've worked in over the past 25 years so it seems odd that schools haven't and are now panicking. Our pupils won first prize in their age categories in a handwriting competition and a rightly proud of their efforts.
We don't teach joined handwriting in reception now but trialed it briefly about ten years ago and decided it was important to teach correct formation first.

I was taught handwriting and corrected a lot. I have clear, legible writing which is often commented on. Why are people up in arms about it? Why shouldn't we teach it, why shouldn't we have high expectations?

I think it's fine to teach it, but I think it's crazy to insist that handwriting must be a certain way and to lower marks based on whether they join letters together or not (unless the test is purely on calligraphy and not on content, spelling, punctuation etc).

DD's school don't seem to have a set policy on handwriting on the website - just looked. Looking at the photos on her class blog, none of the children are joining their letters (Y3).

Rafals have a look at the interim assessment framework from last year:

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473675/Interim_teacher_assessment_frameworks_at_the_end_of_key_stage_2_PDFA_V3.pdf

Which clearly states, spotty, that 'where pupils are physically able to write and meet all of the statements except for being able to produce legible handwriting, they may be awarded the expected standard but cannot be awarded the greater depth standard.'

Which is exactly what Rafa said. Page 3.

I'm familiar with it. I think pg 3 is the relevant part.

Specifically, 'Where pupils are physically able to write and meet all of the statements except for being able to produce legible handwriting, they may be awarded the 'expected standard' but cannot be awarded the 'greater depth standard'.

There's also a clarification document that says the same thing.

In order to teach hand writing it needs to be taught a certain way. School chose a handwriting policy so that everyone focuses on teaching that method.it means staff are consistent. Children in Year three need to start joining if they haven't already.
It also helps spelling as the brain remembers the pattern.

x-posts Feenie

They don't insist it must be a certain way elf.

I was looking at the guidelines and it says that they need to choose whether a join is needed or not...

If that is the case and there are various types of joined-up writing being taught - the handwriting sheets that DD very occasionally gets only have a few letters joined for example, whereas one of her same-age cousins learnt cursive with all sorts of curly flick things at the beginning of letters right from the start in Reception - then who decides what is correct for SATS?

What happens if a child decides that no joins at all are appropriate?

I've been doing some reading on this last night and there were quite a few articles that said that the evidence that cursive helps with things like dyslexia are not proven and some saying that actually it just gives children extra problems and they are better off learning good letter formation.

I don't interfere with what DD's school teach - they have phenomenal results despite a very challenging demographic so they appear to know what they are doing - but I am interested in it from a theoretical point of view.

My daughter has just started in reception and I was quite surprised that she is being taught how to form cursive letters already. She has now had homework 2 weeks running where she has had to practice her cursive letter formation (3 work sheets of letters a week) and she really struggled with the cursive 'S' in week 1. She really enjoys writing and practicing though so wasn't put off, but it seems like it could be a bit heavy going for a child that doesn't enjoy writing so much.

Ours teach them the normal letters in reception, which I like as that's the letters they'd recognise from books and Learning to read. Then it's lead-in lines and then joined up.

Elf you might be interested in this summary of the benefits of handwriting http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html?_r=1

By coincidence this popped up on Twitter http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-claudia-aguirre/how-handwriting-sharpens-your-mindb8203890.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

It's a shame that schools have to focus on appearances - appearance of the children re uniform and appearance of the written work re handwriting rather than whether they have instilled a love of learning and helped a child to fulfil their potential.

Good handwriting is about much more than appearance but taking pride in your work is worth encouraging. Fluent joined handwriting is much quicker than stop start unconnected printing and helps with motor memory for spelling so frees the writer to focus on content.