Report Teaching Cursive Handwriting in the Foundation Stage?!

Original Post

by: joshuajones

T Easton
You don't say whether you are in a reception class or a nursery, which makes a difference. It should be remembered that the foundation stage goes up to the ages of 5/6 depending on entry age to school. However, that aside there is a reasoning to cursive script. For those of us that can remember the old way of teaching letters with everything starting in a set place and ending usually in a different place, printing letters. This was fine except that when we turned about 7 years of age we had to learn a new way of writing in order to join up. This put many of us at a disadvantage, because we had to learn all over again. This caused tremendous problems for some children. Extensive research then showed that if children learnt from the start of their writing careers that everything "starts on the line" and "finishes on the line" as it does in cursive script writing becomes much easier and joining up becomes second nature. This then does not disadvantage some children with a new style of writing at 7. That said, children in nursery should not be being taught to write. They should be given opportunity to practice writing skills, pencil control etc without fear of being told they are getting it wrong.We already disadvantage half our population (boys) by asking them to do things they are not physically ready to do, because we educate too young.( sorry to all those men out their, but it is a proven fact that little boys brains are not as developed as little girls brains, giving rise to a difference in what we should expect from the sexes, until boys catch up) Children are children for a very short time let them develop in their own time, and if that means that some of them don't get the hang of writing until 6/7 well so be it. Look to the continent and places like Sweden/Finland their children do very nicely thankyou with no "formal" education until much later than UK children.

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