Joined up writing in reception ...

[Readysetcake]

DD first piece of homework was to write her name in cursive script. This came as a surprise to me as I didn’t think joined up writing was taught so early. DD struggled with it.

Anyone else’s school teach cursive from the off?

Ours did. I was surprised, but it worked.

What I did notice was handwriting practice makes a huge difference to their end of handwriting.
DD1 they did loads of practicing letters, and words etc. She has beautiful handwriting.
DD2 they did hardly any. Her handwriting looks like a spider's let loose on the page.
Ds did between the two and his handwriting is between the two.
They're all teens now, so probably fairly fixed.

Naturally I'd suggest that dd1 would be the neatest, and ds would be the least neat, from personality and attitude to work. However I wouldn't think dd1's would be so much better.

Ours were taught to use cursive letters straight away in reception. My eldest is a summer born boy and typically was rubbish at handwriting (more so than the average summer born boy actually I think he was the worst in the class). He didn't actually start doing decent cursive letter until Y2 and didn't join them properly until Y4 really but my DD in Y2 is already writing nicely in joined up cursive and has been since last year.

There's no evidence it helps at all - I've got two DCs with coordination problems - DS just made everything look like spiders in Reception because he knew there were supposed to be tails so he just put them everywhere. DD now (Y2) makes her letters deliberately tiny so nobody can tell what they are so she can't be told they are wrong.

Of course not all dc will do that. Some dc find it easier to write the cursive letters from day 1. Others struggle.

Our school has introduced this. To improve handwriting. My ds is now in year 3 and was doing cursive from y1 when they introduced it. His handwriting is miles better than Ds1 who was only taught cursive late on in primary school. I think it's got to be a good thing.

Thanks for the replies. I guess I can see the logic of it making it easier to separate words rather than having them all run together.

DD keeps calling them silly letters at the moment. I can totally see my DD just sticking random tails on letters @drspouse! We will obviously stick with it but I’m not going to push it too hard this year. I don’t want homework battles in reception. Plenty of time for those over the coming years!

Our school did this. The main problem for my eldest was reading - she was reading printed books of course, but when they started sending home spelling words handwritten in cursive, she literally couldn't read them. At the time it was a barrier we could have done without and they have discontinued it now, but at the end of the day they all came out able to read and write.

I was teaching in Reception many years ago when we we introduced cursive from day 1 (under protest from those of us actually teaching in Reception).

After a couple of years, management agreed that too many children weren't ready and said that we could go back to concentrating on basic letter formation in Foundation plus lots of activities to develop fine motor skills, shoulder strength etc.

We now leave joined handwriting until year one which works much better. We put a big emphasis on good handwriting throughout the school (I do short daily handwriting sessions with my year 5s as it's slipped during lockdown).

They learn it from nursery usually. They may be joining some, all or none of the letters. But they will learn the letter formation to be able to join it up when they have mastered all the letters.

Cursive writing has been a disaster for both of my DC. DS1 is now at secondary school. His handwriting is lovely and very legible when he prints. As soon as he tries to join up his letters it is impossible to read. I now remind him to print in tests and assessments as he will lose a lot of marks if a teacher has no idea what he has written.

DS2 is a lefty who has really struggled with handwriting. If he can get his letters the correct way round he has done brilliantly.

@Wilbedon Yep I know a few students who breathed a sigh of relief once they got to secondary and could ignore cursive and just right how they liked as long as it's legible.

At my school reception teaches correct letter formation with end flicks. Year 1 is pre-cursive with lead-ins and flicks and any child who feels confident to join the letters is encouraged to do so. There is ongoing handwriting teaching, uniform size and different joins etc from year one onwards. Last year's year one had the most amazing handwriting I've ever seen and all took pride in their neat work. Most joined their letters once they knew how to do it correctly and they (and us) could easily read it back. Generally the children find it easier to produce pieces of work with cursive as words take less time than writing individual letters and flow rhythmically. IME the hardest thing sometimes is actually staying on the line e.g. letters such as 's' and 'e' are particularly difficult.

Cursive or any joined up handwriting really helps when it comes to their written exams (GCSEs/A levels) when speed really matters, it is much faster than printing.