My Official Handwriter
My daughter just started grade four in a Canadian public school, and one of the things she is most excited about is learning how to handwrite capital letters. She spent grade three learning how to handwrite lowercase letters, and was so proud to be one of the first “official handwriters” in her class. (I get it. I still have my grade four pen license.) Despite being an “official handwriter” in grade three, she was told that capitals had to wait until the following year. Of course, we taught her how to handwrite her first and last initials in uppercase at home, and she taught herself all of the other uppercase letters using an iPad app, but she wasn’t supposed to use capital cursives at school until she learned the proper form. This was somewhat understandable since I had to actually look up some of the letters, such as capital Q!
Cursive Vs. Keyboarding
Despite my daughter’s excitement about cursive, she may never formally learn how to handwrite capitals in school. Handwriting is no longer a compulsory part of the elementary school curriculum in our district. Many schools in the US have also downgraded the importance of handwriting in favor of keyboarding. Personally, I agree that typing is a much more important skill for today’s kids to learn. If there’s no room in the curriculum to teach both cursive and keyboarding, then it seems obvious which one should get the boot. Besides, teaching handwriting is fun, and it’s a simple thing kids can do at home with parents or grandparents. I think my daughter will be willing to give up formal handwriting lessons in exchange for the activities her tech savvy teacher has planned with a class set of tablets, three Macs, and a Wii. Times have changed (since last year)!
What’s Your Opinion on Cursive?
Do you use handwriting for anything besides signing forms? Should elementary school students at least be taught how to write their own signature? If they can’t sign their own names, is it a “huge problem”?
Teaching Cursive
If you’re a parent or teacher who plans on teaching your kids cursive, take a hop over to Sprout English’s Phonics Cafe. You’ll find worksheets for printing and cursive. The cursive worksheets includes lowercase and uppercase letters. There are also worksheets for handwriting short words and sentences. Most importantly (for kids), you’ll find a printable certificate so that your kids can become official handwriters like mine!
Not a member yet? Join today and try 20 Free Sample Lessons.
for elementary level seems perfect as we know the kids like painting so by this way they can easily get learn defintely with fun
Yes, many people are calling cursive “a lost art”. Personally, I don’t think it’s going away too quickly. At school this week, all of the girls in my son’s grade two lineup were dressed in 80s fashion.
It’s really interesting to read what it’s like abroad.
Everybody in the Czech Republic learn to write when they are six in Elementary School – the very first year. In ten months they learn to read and write all – capital and small of both Cursive and Keyboarding
That is interesting, Radka! Here in my district, kids start junior kindergarten at age 4 (sometimes even 3). By grade 1 they can usually print all of their letters, but handwriting isn’t generally taught until grade three. And now, possibly, not at all.
I think cursive has its place and should be taught in Art class but not in regular English or Writing classes
I wonder if that’s what will happen with handwriting. It used to be that we learned calligraphy in art class.
It would be very interesting to analyze the orthography of written texts across different genres/discourse types. Virtually all digital text is non-cursive. Official forms and documents are never in cursive. Perhaps some advertisements and signage use cursive, and of course wedding invitations, but I just don’t see it as much anymore. So it might be useful to emphasize reading cursive, but not necessarily producing it.
I agree that it is useful for students to be able to read cursive! That’s something I hadn’t really thought about. My son sometimes passes his birthday cards to me when he can’t read cursive by relatives. Another point that came up on twitter yesterday was about the main point of using cursive rather than printing. Handwriting helps with speed and is easier on the hand. Many students still have to handwrite tests and exams, and as @harrisonmike mentioned, there are always occasions when no PCs are available.