Cursive writing - thoughts?

[Cortina]

Is this taught these days? By cursive writing I mean the writing with the loopy bs (not sure how to describe) that the older generation seem to have been routinely taught.

I personally write as Vicky Pollard might () and hoped that my children might be taught this old fashioned system?

do you mean what they called joined up writing in the 70's?

They do it here in Italy, dd was taught the basics at nursery.

Don't see the point myself...if the smalls find it easy/want to write like that, fine...but if not, so what? What's important is that the message is intelligible and grammatically correct. A lot of the primary mums here are already in tears trying to get their children to grasp cursive. Better battles to fight IMO.

(though, easy for me to say, as dd likes doing it!)

They do cursive writing in my kids' school. At first I thought it was a disaster - ds1 is left handed and his writing was way behind and all the loopy bits made it even more difficult to read and I just wanted him to learn to form the letters and then worry about joining up. However, somewhere in Y2/Y3 his handwriting suddenly came together (a while after his peers, I should add) and now it is pretty good and when I watch him write I can see that his writing is flowing. Dd in Y1 already has almost as good handwriting as her older brother. There was some research recently saying that old-fashioned handwriting classes shouldn't have been abandoned as the "thought to hand" process is much better if they can do joined up writing from a young age - ie kids can express themselves better and get their ideas on paper more fully if handwriting is automatic and flowing.

Sorry, dd just started Y2.

Seems to be getting more and more common. I HATE it. The idea is that it makes the transition to joined up writing easier later, but it over-complicates the basics.

I help out a bit in DS class, (y4), mainly with ones who are struggling a bit with reading. Funny thing is these children nearly all have really nice handwriting.
I think it is because they were not forced into joining the letters up before they were ready, probably because at that stage they hadn't mastered the basic letters
My research is not totally scientific though, as the children are from a mix of infant schools. I'd need to see more of the handwriting from the other children from the same schools to compare properly.

My dcs are in a French school where cursive writing is routinely taught as soon as they start to learn to write. Dd has beautiful handwriting - much better than mine ever was or is ever likely to be. Ds just started to learn this year and is already better at it than I am. I actually think that is one area in which the French education system really excels. My handwriting is terrible and I wish I'd had some good habits instilled at such an early age.

If you mean joined-up, then my dd is doing it now, at the start of Year 1.

My mother - ex-primary teacher - was all for early joined-up because she felt it helped spelling and fluency. However, she then had to help her children to remember how to print.

I think she set them cross-words to do.

As a child who went to three primary schools, I started it at the end of year 2, then changed schools and started again at the beginning of year 3. My joined-up was great at the age of 10 but is obviously terrible now!

taught from reception here

ds is in yr 2 and had lovely writing

tis not loopy though

I was taught very loopy cursive writing in Canada

My DDs learnt old-fashioned cursive here in France too with all the loops and squiggles.

One of them (12yo) has beautiful handwriting - a mixture of English and French letter formation as she did reception and Y1 in England - whereas the other (9yo), who learnt exclusively in France, writes in a total scrawl.

But in their case it's a personality thing

Dd1 has just gone in to yr1 and they are doing cursive writing. My boys (yrs5 & 7) didn't do it when they were at that school.

Seems to make sense to me.

We used a pencil at school until we learned "joined-up" handwriting and switched to ink pens. My father was appalled by my handwriting so taught me calligraphy. When I think about it my handwriting can be beautiful but it is usually pretty scrawl-like.

Ds(1) learnt cursive writing in year1. Once learnt it makes them much faster at writing which is useful for exams and note taking. However, his printing and his 'capitals' are awful and he's now in Yr 13!

My son has just started reception and they are doing this from the start - not teaching them to print first. I think it may be overcomplicating things, he is another left-hander and finds it very difficult to do letters at the best of times, without all the squiggles.

My own handwriting is like Comic Sans MS though, so I can't really comment.

They've decided not to do it at ds's school because they'd already spent a lot of money on materials for a different handwriting scheme, apparently.

I was taught italic handwriting from year 4 at my school. God it was beautiful. It didn't last though, my writing is diabolical after 3 years of scribbling lecture notes. Perhaps handwriting stays better now due to nobody writing lecture notes any more?

The handwriting programme depends on the individual school round my way.

I know a school which teachers the old fashioned style cursive from a young age and the childrne's handwriting was much neater than those in other schools

Is this also referred to as "Kingston" writing? Both my ds's have done this from yr2. Mind you, by the time they get to years 5/6, they have their own style and it's not always joined up. Not sure of the importance of it all to be honest .... does anyone know?

My school has it's own cursive writing style which all children are taught and use throughout the school. The presentation of their work looks beautiful. I always feel it is such a shame that after one term at secondary standards have slipped and their writing is mainly print.

Ds has done it from reception. PITA as he could already write and had to re-learn this loopy style.

I havnt read all the posts but would like to dd that there is clear resurch to suggest that children who are dyslexic or hav dyslexic tendancies write in cursive writing as the had rembers how the word feels. To a child with dyslexia when writing individual letters dose feels like does but when writing through crusive writing the word feels different making it eaiser to lern the feel of teh word and sepell it correctly.

That's interesting Cloud Hopper and can sort of see what you mean. Might explain why writing 100 years ago seemed more uniform etc?

I think it looks better and wonder if it is an ideal template that you can then develop your own style?

Can you learn as an adult? Friends at secondary school who had cursive writing could write legibly at speed (do you remember when you had only 10 mins to get the jist of the essay down as you were running out of time)? At this point my writing looked like a 5 year olds but theirs seemed to remain essentially the same.

Mind you when our 5 year olds take GCSE it will probably be all on a PC?

I don't like this whole joined up writing obsession schools have.

I would rather my ds wrote a whole page of legible but interesting work than struggled to do cursive and lose the thread of what he's writing about..which is what happens now

Cortina - yes, you can learn as an adult - the junior school I work in introduced cursive when the new head arrived, so all the teachers had to learn it - I did too & I'm 53! We were taught how to do it by one of the teachers who learned the style at school in South Africa. We're now in our 3rd year of using it & presentation, speed & fluency has really improved.

Cybil - when we started the scheme, it was just used in the weekly handwriting sessions, and the children could choose whether to use it or their old style in their creative writing or topic/science reports. Most of them really enjoyed the handwriting sessions & as they got more confident & realised how much easier it was they started to use it more & now it's used much more often.

We use this style, and we also have the font installed on all our computers & use it for displays & notices.