BluebellFinn - 14 September 2011 02:07 PM

Definitely not shooting you down but really dont get this! Are they saying those with difficulties will be caught earlier because cursive is tricky for those with fine motor issues?

Since youve mentioned dyslexia, cursive is actually meant to be great for dyslexic children because they often have poor working memory function and cursive always starts at the bottom whereas other styles have varying start points and this can be hard to remember!

Thanks for not shooting the messenger!!!!!  This was the reason the nursery gave me when i questioned the writing style as I too thought it was too early, but it seems to have benefitted us. 

xx

purplecavingcat - 13 September 2011 06:02 PM

Thanks all! I googled Cursive writting and montesorri and was really re assured by what I found. Essentially I can see why the teach currsive now, and I do remember reading in a letter home that they were rolling it out across the whole school. Still not sure about the long lines of letters though….surely there MUST be a more (five year old boy) friendly way of teaching this? I’ll ask the teacher when I see her…...

Glad you’re feeling more comfortable with this. I too would think there was a better way than just repetetive lines, I could see what they do at dd’s school for those who aren’t writing much at the moment. I think it still needs to be an individual basis thing, they are at such different levels at this age.

Thinking back to when dd started doing this off her own bat at home - she had one of those magna draw boards and used to do twirly letters as she used to call them on that and just kept doing them. Maybe you have one and could see if he fancies playing with letters that way.

Just as an addeed bit - I’m not sure if I’m mixing up bits of things I’ve read but I think I read that children who can read cursive writing find it easier to read all types of writing - cursive and prints, but those who read print style writing only take longer to understand cursive so well (?I might have this wrong?) - so this may benefit reading skills too for some children. Not sure about this so maybe someone else can figure out what my brain is on about -  not sure how this works with learning to read from books (?) - but I can recall my daughter, when she first learnt to read, could easily read what I’d written in notes, etc.

I am dyslexic and really struggled to write and spell as I was taught to join up from the begining. it really really held me back. when I got to 13 I had an amazing englsh teacher who said the every one writes differently and the whole point of writing is so that some one else can read it. if you don’t want to join up then don’t. over night my writing changed. I still have my books to prove it. all of a sudden I became more confident in writing as I could concentrate on the spelling of the word rather than where the pencil has to go next. my writing became legible and all of a sudden my spelling became much better.  ihad spent at least 8 years struggling to do something that was clearly not working for me. my dyslexia was not picked up until I went to uni . but what I say to my kids is to form the letter they way they want to and as long as other people can read it they can write however they want to. my point is that they enjoy writing, and are able to expess what they want to say through it. surly that’s what writing is about ?