Information on joined up writing in the UK

Confuzzled

I hope this is the correct forum for this, if not I appologise!

Right now I'm home educating my 8 year old daughter. She has been in the UK system but after a year in Amsterdam and some traumatic stuff I won't go into we returned to the UK and I promised to educate her at home.

Now, if I were able to continue educating her at home indefinitely then I wouldn't be so concerned about this but I'm going back to uni full time in October of this year so I need to make sure she's at least up to speed on the basics (actually she's several years ahead on most things right now) and this includes joined up writing.

I'm American so i'm already at a disadvantage as I don't know what the customary age is to start teaching this. Googling it brings up a bunch of articles about how they're starting it younger and younger and I 'think' it may be at the P4 level which she would be at now that they are supposed to have it regularly, is that right?

Also I'm having a bit of bother trying to find out the specific 'style' of joined up writing (or cursive as i know it) I learned D'Nealian style (see the pic on the wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cursive.svg ) however what i've downloaded in worksheets from Sparklebox (a UK site) they seem to be using another version that quite frankly looks very awkward on some of the letters such as r, s and z and their lowercase z looks too much like my lowercase r so is confusing to me let alone her!

So, I did some more Googling and from what I can see it can be a different style from one school to another :eek: This is even more of a hassle as I don't know where we'll be living until I get my letters of acceptance so I thought I'd ask what 'version' of joined up writing is most commonly used, especially in Scotland as that's where we are now and I've only applied to universities in Scotland.

I will say, annoying as it was to try and read her printing where they taught her to add all the curly bits it has made it easier for her now so that's good on them but I'm not impressed by the work sheets I have found thus far and I don't want her to have to relearn everything. From some of the comments I'm seeing on forums some schools are really horrible about nitpicking about the cursive, when as far as I'm concerned, with no continuity it seems they should be happy if it's legible and spelled correctly! at any rate, she's eager to do this and was so proud of herself when at Christmas she wrote all the the 'you's in joined up writing on her gift tags! I don't want to put her off so I could really do with some advice on this one please.

I'm teaching her about simple chemistry, basic algebraic equations, fractions and she reads 4 years above her level with ease yet I'M getting hung up on handwriting :rotfl:

tamarto

My son is p5 and it looks similar to your link without all the loops. He says that he doesn't need to link letters like b to anything.

I'd say that as long as her writing is legible and without loops lol any school will be happy enough and if they feel she needs to work on it i'd imagine that would be something you can do with her at home.

I can't see it being an issue at all.

We are is scotland.

Edited to add: It seems schools in England are more nit picky than ones in Scotland about things like that that don't really matter, i haven't come across a school that would be bothered by it.

stef240377

I know at the infant and primary schools my kids have attended (all are at high school now) the importance was on getting pen to paper in a legible form rather than over concentrating on joined up writing. Not one of mine now uses joined up writing and i know if my 13yo son attempts to it just looks like a 3 year olds scrawl on paper.

I have raised this several times with the schools and even now at high school they are not interested even with spellings. Some of the stuff mine write is shocking. I also mentioned this with my 13yos pyschologist who has attempted for 18months to get contact from the school on how he is doing and is drawing a blank so we are waiting for CAHMS to step in.

As long as your daughter can write i would be happy with that.

Confuzzled

Thanks for the repsonses so far

There is shockingly little available online for specific information (and I'm pretty good at Googling!) however I did find this link http://www.unask.com/website/handwriting/new_web_pages/acquisition.htm . It's terribly dated though, from 1994 but it says after polling around 300 schools they found that in Scotland 85% of the schools use Round Hand which is, unfortunately, from what I can make out from the tiny sample they give the same as the Sparklebox worksheets.

It's nice to know that they don't seem to be as picky in Scotland. Personally, I believe that focusing too much on the fine details can be so off-putting that it can discourage children so as long as it's legible that should be what counts. In that regard unless I can get my hands on something specific to guide me, I shall probably teach her a mix of what I learned (from what I can tell it would be 'Looped Cursive') and the Round Hand and that should be sufficient. We'll work out what works best for her I suppose, afterall, she's the one that has to do it!

My handwriting has become a mixture of printing and cursive and to be honest is far easier to read than my old cursive only sprawl (faster to write too). I suspect less and less emphasis is being placed on writing skills as most work can or is done on computers so typing skills are more 'modern'. Saying that we do still need to learn to write legibly!

As for the schools that don't even care about spelling, I find that appalling! We all have our little words that we misspell regularly, even the best spellers do, that's normal. But I do feel that spelling is important in certain circumstances and I would think school work would be one of them!

kay74

A lot of scottish schools use Nelson script (can buy the handwring books / skills and development etc off Amazon sometimes). Some of the older teachers may also teach Gourdie script. Children often now start on Nelson script from the start whereas previously they would be taught o Nlson block and move to script at P3/4 ish. Hope this helps.

tamarto

I imagine that'll be fine but without the loops lol when i was at school and still now it's one of the things that appears in his book, if there are loops instead of straight up and down. :rotfl:

But honestly i seriously doubt it'll be an issue, if you have any questions about schools in scotland feel free to pm me i also have a child in p3 so very close to your daughters age.

BabyFranny

I could scan you some of my old schoolbooks so you can see it .
(I'm not in Scotland)

tamarto

Actually this thread has been interesting if only to see how pretty their writing should look

By secondry age how a child writes isn't picked up on as long as it is legible, we went through a phase of putting circles or love hearts above all our i's and the teachers said nothing other than it probably wasn't the best idea to do that in an exam lol

tandraig

Personally hun, I would teach her whatever method you are comfortable with! if she does go to school in this country later then they are just going to have to live with it! its much better to have her happy and relaxed and have legible writing than to be worried about the style!!! she can learn calligraphy later in life if it interests her or you!!!
My aunt was taught the old fashioned hand and her writing was beautiful but a little hard to read to modern eyes. My daughter was taught that horrible rounded hand, and her teacher was insistent on the whole class using it. caused no end of probs because her natural inclination was a more italic style similar to mine. (which is the hand i was taught).
whichever hand you are taught, somehow, you end up with handwriting uniquely yours!

BitterAndTwisted

All this joined-up writing business is very old-fashioned now and the script most often used by the Americans I know looks even more old-fashioned to me and I'm ancient.

My own sister who is in her late forties still writes in print. I don't think she ever learned joined-up writing but she managed to pass all of her exams and went on to get a decent degree quite recently. Lord knows, it seems that students these days aren't even expected to be able to spell any longer, so I honestly think you're over-thinking this one.

daska

As far as I can tell there are a large number of teachers who don't actually have a clue about how writing develops or how to teach it properly. They concentrate on teaching cursive handwriting instead of handwriting and they waste time and effort on getting the loops correct instead of getting a smooth even technique :mad:

Teach them a good hand, forming the letters in the correct manner and they'll automatically learn to join it up as they write faster. I'd suggest using the following:
National Handwriting Association
Chris Jarman
If the school then dares to complain that they're not doing it properly you can ask why they disagree with the experts.

(As you may have ascertained from this post, it's something I feel strongly about. I spent a lot of effort training my dyspraxic son into writing legibly and one teacher wrecked it in less than a term!)