Teaching 'tiddlers' joined up

[Katiestar]

Our school have started teaching children joined up from the start of reception .It is a weird new 'loopy ' handwriting style they have implemented across the school ,it nvolves starting every letter on the line.
I can't help thinking it must be very confusing to the children when the letters they are learning to read with are very different to the ones they write.My youngest is due to start sxchool next September and I wondered what other parents experiences of this system has been

It is a tried and tested format and it works well; they learn the letters on their own and then they squish them together and hey presto! by the time they start juniors they have a consistent joined style of writing.

Try not to worry

no advice - but have to laugh - dd and her friend were talking on the way to brownies about just this - dd is just beginning to do 'joined up writing' but not 'allowed' to use curly loopy bits - and her friend started in reception and it's very loopy apparently. Was funny listening to them chatter about their 'school policies' (their words!) and 'programs of study' lol

They learn them in groups of ones above the line, ones with loops under the line etc and depsite appearances to the cotrary early on it is not long before they have perfect script
i have boy/girl twins and the whole fine motor skill thing does come into play but she has better writing than I did at twice her age. onw weired thing is that the i and the t and the x all have the dot, cross, diagonal
they seem to enjoy learning it
if you have a girl it can make them slow as the perfectionism thing can be very tedious as long words take for ever especailly if the have an o or and s as these are fprmed in a very complex loopy way and if you have a boy the whole thing can look like very spidery
not to generalise of course!

It is working well in our school. DD2 and 3 who were taught joined up writing from the beginning, have far better writing than DD1 who wasn't.

DD2 learnt like this. It really doesn't confuse them at all to read print and write cursive.

It generally makes for better handwriting long-term too, even if it looks spidery to start with.