joined up writing!

[HonoriaGlossop]

Can I do a bit of research, have parents evening soon and would like to know how other schools approach this.

DS is five and in year one. From the very beginning of being taught letters, they have been taught joined script (do I mean cursive?) so for example rather than just an S shape DS has to start on the bottom of the line, go up to the top, do an s, then finish with a joining line (if you see what I mean!) It actually ends up looking nothing like an S!

DS is youngest in year and has hypermobility which means he has difficulties with fine and gross motor skills. As you can imagine he is finding it DOUBLY hard to form his letters.

I've spoken to the teacher and the reasoning is that this way they only have to be taught once rather than taught to form letters THEN taught to join. She said they used to be taught to join in Junior school.

Which to me is a far more age appropriate time to learn.

What is wrong with being taught twice, if it means you are taught the first time at an age appropriate level!!!

Of course some kids do fine at it and it's not a problem for everyone.

Sorry for rambling, I'd just like to know how common this practice is and whether ALL infant kids now are being taught this way?

TIA

Ha! The irony of being told to go back to printing

My dd is in reception class, she was 5 last week and this is exactly how they are taught to write from the start. TBH she is finding it difficult too, it seems to be common practice in the schools around here.

thanks for that onefoot

Our school does it to, DD is in reception. Drives me mad. It all looks disgusting, bloody tails, and she can't even read what she is writing.

I think it is stupid, nothing wrong with printing, and then teaching cursive.

But to be hones it is not even proper cursive as I know it. I am used to old-fashioned cursive, with loops and stuff, and s and r are written differently in cursive than in print. Looks much better in my opinion and easier to write. That's how they teach it in the US (and France, and Germany). I have very good handwriting so I tend to think the way they did it in my days was way better than current cursive-print hybrid with damn tails. But then I was taught to write cursive at 7.

Anyway, I am going to take her out of this school from next year, obviously not just for the reason alone, but it is one of the reasons, don't want her handwriting to be screwed up from the start, as their hands are just not ready to write proper cursive at this age, she joins incorrectly, and bad habits are very hard to cure later

My son's school teachers pre cursive writing and then joined up writing in year 2. His school teaches the script used in Jolly phonics and it look quite nice.

www.communication4all.co.uk/Phonics/Writing%20Practice%20Phonics.pdf

It is easy to later go on to cursive writing. I also think with pre cursive writing children don't get confused between "b" and "d" in the same way as if they are taught to draw a ball and a stick.

I agree that teaching proper cursive writing in reception is mad.

It didnt make sense to me at first, but now I'm a big fan of joined up writing, I even write that way myself sometims. It saves a lot of time in long run in school. It can be as neat as printing. I remember spending ages to learn to write cursive, so joined up from Reception makes a lot of sense to me now.

BUT Our Y1's still mostly do each letter separately, they are discouraged from joining letters up unless their individual letters are consistently neat.

but why is it necessary to save time in school? School is about learning to read and write, so why the need to 'save time?'

ours do 'basic' cursive - no 's's like the one you describe, but simple tails on 'a' and 'd' for example

joined up writing is very helpful for spelling later on - I would encourage it tbh

Ours sounds like yours enid - letters like a and m have a tail on the end, but they don't do weird s or r.

I do encourage him, am dutiful parent supporting the school and all that - it's just when a child has a difficulty like ds has, it's sad to see them REALLY struggling with something when you know it could be made so much easier

my point is about readiness; he is not ready to do this yet but he may well be later on

I know schools have to have systems for doing things but this seems to be based on 'saving time' (For what purpose?!) and not based on the children's state of readiness

they discourage extremely 'loopy' writing in fact - 'simple' joined up only

I have objected strongly to this very thing myself. It's completely stupid imo. Learn to form the letters and when they're old enough to joined up just tell them not to take the pencil/pen off the paper until the end of hte word. It's not hard.

Really really stupid, but it's government policy apparently. That explains it!

government policy! Ye gods. What next will they have a policy on

Cursive from the start at my school too. Apparently research has shown it leads to neater joined up writing earlier than if printing is learned first. It is also meant to help spelling as well, as the words flow rather than stop and start.

I know learning cursive put my dd1 off writing from reception until the second term of Yr 2 as it was so fiddly and it looked so rubbish. I was not very happy (she learned to print her letters before school). Hwr dd2 who could also print before school has taken to cursive really well and loves writing!

I think it works fine for those with good motor skills and confidence. For less skilled and less confident children I think it is too much too soon...

DS2 (6.5 in Y2) is being taught to join this year, but they don't do precursive. He is still not ready for it and the result is illegible. When he prints his teacher writes comments about how he should be joining, and when he joins she writes comments about how untidy it is. I think the whole handwriting thing is very dispiriting for a child with poor fine motor skills.

We expect children to record too much far too early.

HG - DS's school do teach the same way, but certainly don't force it - those who are still struggling with consistent letter formation are kept on printing (with tails where they are obvious), those who have that sussed are encouraged to start moving to cursive - DS is in Year 1 and there are people in his class at both ends of the spectrum and they seem quite chilled about it.

stealth I guess that's the best I can hope for, that she will not force the issue too much. I'll check on parents evening.

singersgirl, that is exactly what I think is so bad about this 'one approach to fit all' policy; getting crap results is no good for any child's self esteem, is it? on your ds' behalf at this silly teacher

and I totally agree with you - "we expect children to record too much far too early"

DD (now Y7) not taught till juniors. She hated it but told by Y6 teacher she HAD to do it or would lose marks in SATS. So she did it for Sats only and for everything else she has beautifully clear round hand.

Ds (now Y4) had to from infants - which was really silly because he couldn't damned well read or write till Y2 anyway. He now does beautiful loopy writing which I'm told is perfect but which I cant read.

I hate cursive writing WITH A VENGEANCE

She's been banging on about neatness all year as it's his weak spot. He'd just got his printing to a quite clear and legible level when he got the comment: "Any chance of some joining?" So he joined for the next piece of work and got a long paragraph about how difficult it had been to read.

On the positive side, he seems quite oblivious, but I am gritting my teeth for parents' evening.("What strategies do you have in place to help him with this?" sounds like a starting point )

I hope the teacher is relaxed about your DS's writing and cuts him some slack, HG.

DD is being taught cursive now (yr 2, age 7) and tbh it's really pissed me off.
She is left handed and has terrible writing yet rather than tell her to concentrate on what she can do they are trying to get her to write this new way.
Fucking joke.
I suppose at least if they learn in reception they don't have to learn twice.

I'm surprised that young children can tell where a join ends and a letter starts. And how teachers decipher the work . It's hard enough with pre-cursive!

I think we should get a policy together to BAN BLOODY CURSIVE from our households!!

I have no problem with cursive whatsoever. I absolutely love it, it does help spelling, it is more fluid, you can write way faster than printing, etc.

BUT!!! Not at the age of 4 (my DD is summer birthday,so pretty young for her)!!! She can't distinguish where tail ends and letter starts, etc, what's wrong with Jolly Phonics type font for that matter.

But my main gripe is not even that, but why do they have to bloody write at all at that stage? If you want them to learn to put letters into words and sentences - get some joining cubes with letters, magnetic letters, whatever, plenty of that kind of stuff available.

I am yet to see a kid with proper, good handwriting and good posture and proper pencil grip. I watched her class writing, and half of them hold the pencil in the wrong way - what about concentrating on that and doing cursive at age 7?

And I remember when I was taught it (went back to my school notebooks), I was taught to write short stick first, properly spaced, and even. Thank stick with tails, than little loops, then circles, again properly sized, evenly spaced etc, and only THEN when the basic skills where mastered, and the hand was ready were we moving to proper cursive writing, which after that seemed a breeze

I agree about the pencil hold. DS1, now 9, used to hold a pencil correctly at 2 and 3. But when he started school at just 4 he didn't have the muscle strength to hold it for long enough so adapted his grip - wrongly. And by the time anyone noticed it was entrenched. Now he has awful handwriting and an dreadful, uncomfortable grip. I think it's because he was forced to write too much too early.