Cursive Writing

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Home : 2002 : April : 18

Cursive Writing
By One Teacher's Opinion

Dear Becky,

Maybe I'm too "easy" with my kids, but actually I encourage them NOT to use cursive on spelling tests because it is so easy for them to make mistakes. A lot of letters a/o, m/n, e/l, u/i can get mixed up easily.
I hate for them to miss words just because they are not proficient in cursive yet. For some children, they are focusing so much on the cursive they forget they need to spell the word right!
What I find at this age level (3rd) is that cursive is easy for some children and hard for others. I'm not even sure it's a matter of laziness--it seems to be more a matter of coordination

and maturity.

We begin cursive writing in third and I gradually try to get them to switch over to cursive, but I do it more in an encouraging way than as a requirement. Actually, most of them are very excited to be learning "grown-up writing."

For a while there I was trying to get them to do all their work--except spelling tests and rough drafts of writing--in cursive, only to discover the fourth grade teacher's didn't seem to care if they printed or not. After that, I decided to let "maturity take its course" and not overwhelm the "strugglers" who had trouble getting through the work with requirements for everything in cursive. I teach multi-grade and I have discovered that often just an extra year of maturity makes the difference.

It's not that I don't think learning (and teaching) cursive is important. I do. But some just don't seem ready yet. As someone said at one workshop--outside of your name you don't need cursive much in the "real world." What does almost every form say? "Print legibly!"