Year One - everything typed in cursive. I can barely read it!

[NapQueen]

Dd has gone from being able to read everything given in Reception class abd now we are both sat squinting at the y1 homework as its all typed in joined up odd looking font.

Did everyones y1 kids swap to joined up?

No.

No. Joined writing here at Primary 3, which is around year 2. We don't do cursive at all.

This is the font used by the teacher in printed materials? Just ask the teacher to use a different font, explain you can't read it, well first up is to get DD to say she can't read it in the class.

I think this is the font, looks very similar.

Dd hasnt been taught the shapes for cursive yet, especially the k and the tails on the g and j. It also is tiny in the books too which is why I am struggling.

Its on all printed works. Homework sentences dd is expected to read etc.

We used to get newsletters typed in cursive font and I found it a real struggle to read it!

They are starting to write in joined up, but the letter formation is same as they learned in reception so no problem reading it. Worth mentioning to the teacher that you're both struggling. Perhaps they could at least switch to a non-joined form of the font for the first part of the year, that's generally easier to discern.

Typed cursive is so hard to read! And rather twee IMO :-)

Cursive here, dd can't do it, I can't do it.

Our kids are learning joined up writing from the very start this year too. Apparently it is because it is easier for kids with dyslexia to read.

It looks really odd and the letters look really different from what they have come across so far in life.

They also seem really complicated to write because every letter has to start and finish in the same place.

Load of nonsense to me, but I guess the professionals know best.

Ours start right from reception - basically when they learn a letter they learn it with the "joining" bits too so that when they write more than one letter in a sequence it is in cursive.

It is supposed to be so they don't have to learn it twice.

That’s the handwriting style I learned as a child.

So much nicer than the one favoured by many UK schools now.

Cursive here too at start of year 1. Ridiculous, they aren't that confident with their capital vs lower case letters yet, never mind evenly sized letters with top and bottom bits well balanced. So throwing another way of writing into the mix seems a really daft idea

Our school did cursive from age 4. It was too early. Trying to work out how to join this letter to that letter used up a lot of mental energy that should have been spent on "how to spell these sounds in the word."

I had already taught her pre-cursive (letters with before-and-after flicks) at home, and I remember stating clearly on homework "My daughter is finding cursive stressful, so we will not join letters and will instead do pre-cursive separate letters for the moment. She will start joining when she is ready." Which she did, but putting too much pressure too early can stress kids unnecessarily.