Cursive Writing - Teaching Handwriting to Children

By Louise Atheling

The fashion for cursive writing comes and goes. Many years ago all children were taught to write in an elaborate cursive script, requiring many hours of weekly practice to perfect. Over the years as other subjects began to crowd out handwriting lessons in the school curriculum this gradually gave way to teaching a basic print style of handwriting (ball and stick). Many people now believe that keyboarding skills are more important than good handwriting. Others believe that even computer keyboards will soon be defunct with speech recognition software becoming more popular.

However, many schools do still teach cursive writing. Traditionally schools teach children a simple print style of handwriting first, moving on to cursive at a later stage. This has the advantage that the initial letter shapes are less complex to write and most of them match the style of letters which children come across in their reading books. One disadvantage is that children spend many hours practicing one style of handwriting only to be told after two or three years that they now need to write in a completely different style. As any teacher or parent knows, it's very hard to get children to 'unlearn' well-established habits, whether it's thumb-sucking or a writing style.

A growing number of schools is teaching cursive letter formation right from the start. There are a number of advantages to this:

• Children only have to learn one way to write letters so they get lots more practice in the desired style
• Children are not taught 'bad' habits that they will have to unlearn later
• Cursive letter shapes are more distinctive than print which reduces the chance of reversal mix-ups e.g. b/d
• Cursive from the start is recommended by many dyslexia specialists
• There is no messy transition stage to dent children's confidence as they progress from print to cursive

Children need to be given lots of opportunity to write. The first word most kids will want to write is their own name. Parents can help by providing a good handwriting model for children to trace over at first, then later to copy. One way is to write the child's name using a light color then the child can trace over it with a darker color.

Dotted letters are very effective for handwriting practice too. You can buy handwriting practice books but they won't be personalized for your child so you may want to consider getting a dotted font for your computer. Make sure you get the same style as your child is using at school to avoid making handwriting more complicated for them! It's easy to install a font on your computer and then you will be able to create name cards or type out a little story your child tells you. Once printed out the child can trace over the dotted letters.

Probably the most important point is to supervise children closely whenever they are writing. That way parents and teachers can ensure that the child has a good tripod pencil grip for control. Supervision should also ensure that children start each letter in the right place and move the pencil in the right direction. Getting the letter formation correct is much more important than neatness in the early stages. If children get into the habit of starting a letter in the wrong place or moving in the wrong direction, for example drawing the letter o in a clockwise direction instead of anti-clockwise, these habits will easily become ingrained and very hard to correct later.


You can find free handwriting worksheets here. If you would like to have a go at making your own handwriting worksheets, you can download a range of handwriting fonts for parents and teachers here. They're available for instant download and are self-installing on Windows PCs so that you can get started straight away.

Louise Atheling is an experienced family learning teacher.

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