Teaching Kids Cursive

I have been teaching my daughter via the program "Cursive First" and am so pleased with her progress. An in-law never learned to write cursive, and I have always felt sorry about that. I can't imagine not scribbling away in cursive as well as print, so I always knew I would teach Miss G cursive. She hated it at first--then got good at it, and doesn't fuss about her practice any more.

She'll be able to read old recipes and letters, and besides that, it's good for the brain. (Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cursive--Memoria Press) At least one state education system has reintroduced cursive into the public school curriculum after having dropped it, and good job, I say!

source

Depending on her vocabulary and interest in history, the National Archives are always looking for more people to transcribe old cursive documents to print.

https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions

K Kaba wrote:Depending on her vocabulary and interest in history, the National Archives are always looking for more people to transcribe old cursive documents to print.

https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions

That is very very neat. Wow, thanks for posting this!

For parents wanting to attempt this, there are some recommended ways to approach it.

One approach is to group "like" letters - so a, d, g, and q which all start with the same circle pattern, would be a group. Wait until they're good at those before adding a different pattern like, l, b, f, h, k.

Also, traditionally it was taught in Gr. 3 or 4, but some kids are ready sooner, and some later, so if they can't seem to get it at one step, wait until their next growth spurt and try again.

Motivation is everything. Tricks like writing funny jokes to your child in cursive? Asking a beloved Aunt to send a letter in cursive? Getting multicoloured chalk for practicing cursive on a chalkboard? This one depends on the child, but is worth thinking about.

My last comment is that some sorts of dyslexics actually find cursive easier to read, but - and this is a big but - some seriously just can't. My son can blow some of his engineering friends out of the water with his mental math, but don't bother trying to teach him to read or write cursive. Been there, done that, it just wouldn't stick. Humans are wonderfully diverse and it's important not to hold negatives against them.

Rachel,
I'm so happy you are doing this!
Christmas time I gave a few small family odds and ends and some photographs to each of our young great grandchildren. I wrote them each a long letter explaining the items and who was who in the photos...without a thought I wrote in cursive and they could not read it...I almost cried.  I had heard it wasn't being taught but it didn't hit me until that moment.  Most of my family history is written in cursive, letters and names on the backs of pictures.

Thank you for this thread! It inspired me to test and see if my kids could read cursive, even if they don't write in it. I had a feeling my daughter could, because she spent about a month wanting to learn it when she was 6, but I wasn't sure about my son (who is like Jay's son).

I made a little message and folded it up 17th-century-letter style and tossed it at them. My son picked it up and said, "Cursive, cursive, cursive," and then tossed it aside.

My daughter then picked it up and read the first paragraph, and went straight to the kitchen to get some Turkish Delight.

This inspired my son to pick up the letter and read the rest of it. He then went straight to our den and cleaned up the toys to earn a board game (and then came to get Turkish Delight and tell my daughter to read the rest of the letter).

Both kids LOVED this, and want me to write more secret messages. But what to write....

Nicole,
I do plan to try again at a quieter time (it was a christmas party).
I'm sure they can make out some words it's just that their first reaction was 'I can't read that!'
Making it a game is a wonderful idea and maybe, since I'm at a distance, writing letters will be the thing to do.

Judith Browning wrote:Rachel,
I wrote in cursive and they could not read it

I find it very hard to read cursive too, despite having learned it back in school (I'm 44 now).  Both my husband and son can only write in cursive, or joined-up writing as they call it here and I really can't read either of their handwriting.  What's worse, they don't know how to write in block script like me, except capital letters:  they were never taught it at school here in the UK.  I learned handwriting in the US, both ways (block script first);  and because I find it so hard to read, I abandoned cursive as soon as it was no longer required at school.

So I guess what I'm saying is, cursive is all well and good, but teach/learn block script too!

Ahhh cursive...
In California in third grade we were just starting to learn letters having started by learning to make circles and slanted lines that were connected to get those muscle skills down first then we were moving onto letters...  
Then daddy was transferred to Delaware  I walk into the classroom and look at the stuff on the board and asked what it was.  That "scribble" on the board was our homework assignment.  In Delaware they had started cursive the year before...  that was a lot of catch up for me.  My cursive varies from beautiful to (more normal) scribble that my husband is always putting down...

The biggest problem with removing music and cursive from our schools is that they both activate portions of the brain that only respond to learning music or the actions involved in learning cursive and they are separate parts of the brain.   And of course we have no idea what impact that has on us as people.   What abilities have not been unlocked? Does it affect how we respond to people or maybe it affects our ability to think critically OR ???

The typography they teach in my son's class is still the same that I learned in school, we call it 'letra de escuela', or 'school calligraphy' (see below).
Also, some of his books use a font type that looks very similar, called 'edelfontmed regular'. It can be installed here: https://www.en.netfontes.com.br/view/edelfontmed_regular/
His calligraphy is something between the two types.


I used to write in a fast palatino type, readable but ugly, and now I prefer to use bastard italics (see here: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letra_bastarda_(caligraf%C3%ADa)
in cursive style, also readable and less ugly.

G Freden wrote:I find it very hard to read cursive too, despite having learned it back in school (I'm 44 now).  Both my husband and son can only write in cursive, or joined-up writing as they call it here and I really can't read either of their handwriting.  What's worse, they don't know how to write in block script like me, except capital letters:  they were never taught it at school here in the UK.  I learned handwriting in the US, both ways (block script first);  and because I find it so hard to read, I abandoned cursive as soon as it was no longer required at school.

So I guess what I'm saying is, cursive is all well and good, but teach/learn block script too!

It's really easy for cursive to get "sloppy" or even just very angular. I find it rather difficult to read when the letters aren't well-defined.

Abraham's example above shows a very readable (at least to me) cursive font:

Even though I don't know what it means, I can easily read 'el veloz murcielago hindu comia'

The above cursive letters are distinct and rounded, and it's more like print writing, but with the letters connected.

But, not all cursive is formed that way. When I read old American diaries and texts, a lot of the time the cursive is very thin and slanted. This makes lower case e's, c's, and i's all look very similar. And, a string of short letters, like i's, m's, and v's can make it hard to figure out which bump goes to which letter. Here's an few example of some of the more difficult cursive:



Here's a more difficult cursive, at least for me:

I'm not sure what all those letters are

Not everyone forms their letters the same way, either. Reading old census records is a bit crazy, too. There's a lot of different types of cursive, and they're not all easy to read! In fact, if anyone tried to read the tiny cursive notes I make in the margin of textbooks or when listening to a lesson, I'm sure they'd struggle! I don't always even form every letter of every word--I can read it, but I'm sure most people cannot!

I think it's fun to learn cursive, and I love being able to write it, and I want my kids to be able to know what a cursive "r" looks like and a cursive "s." I'd love if they learned it, even if they just learn it as a secret code, much like I learned to write in runes as a kid. But, I'm not sure everyone should have to learn cursive. Most people cannot read medieval calligraphy--the letters are often formed quite differently than ours.

These are print/block letters...but it's so hard to read that I can't even be sure it's in Latin and not English

I found this site with medieval manuscripts written in English: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/medievaldocuments/languages.aspx

This is Anglo-Norman. Can you identify all the letters?

This is apparently written in English...

This is from the 1300's. Also apparently in English

This is from the late 1400's, and is apparently in English

I love writing in medieval calligraphy...and I can't even read most of those! Maybe I just lack skill? But, I have a feeling I'm not the only one. One big reason people want kids to learn cursive is for them to read historical documents. But, if we're aiming for that, shouldn't we also teach them to read medieval calligraphy? Or, maybe we should realize that learning cursive might become a skill that historians learn, and not everyone knows. I still think it's really valuable, but I don't think it's the end of the world if someone can't read or write it. It's a skill, and we don't all have the same skills.

Nicole, I am here having my morning tea and FLASHBACKS, because I studied two of those manuscripts you posted above when I was in college. I did an honors degree in Old English (Beowulf era) and actually had to take a few graduate level classes in calligraphy deciphering!! I can still get through about 2/3 of those texts (it's pre-Chaucer verse), but not the last one. Every region, every era, every monastery/ecclesiastic division had its own handwriting style, then after the Norman conquest there is mixing and it's all over the place.
My point, even if your job is reading this stuff every day as a researcher, you still have to learn the specific ones, and I distinctly remember my professor saying there were times he would just call someone he knew who specialized in a certain type of text/region/time period and ask for a transcript, because it would save inordinate amounts of time. Nobody can read them all.
There were some interesting textbooks, but IIRC they were grouped for researcher use (so it would be like Northern England 1300-1450, post-Roman British Latin 850-1000, etc) and maybe ridiculously specific for general interest.
Edited to add: even if I can't read it much anymore, it came in handy-- in certified translation I sometimes get old handwritten birth/marriage certificates that are really, really hard to read.

I am reading this conversation with interest not because I write well (my writing has always been terrible - my grandmother saw me studying when I was visiting her during college and said "another language!! when did you start learning Arabic?" I was not, in fact, writing Arabic....), but because I also had to teach my daughter to read in Japanese. Any notes we left around the house were in Japanese, but the best thing I did was the advent calendar-- instead of putting a gift in each cubby, there was a strip of paper with a note. If she could decipher what the note said (the name of the gift), it was hers. This of course was when she was first learning, and it was so much fun for her to decipher what the things were. Over time the clues got a bit more complex.
After having taught Japanese to many kids (I taught high school) and reading/writing for many adults (English literacy) I am a super firm believer in the physical act of training writing. The hand has to do the motion, thousands of times. When you ask a Japanese person how to write a word, almost always they will physically trace out the character with their finger on their palm, because the muscle memory is so strong. It works, but it can be tedious.
You can mix up the muscles and make it more fun by changing the scale-- chalk out on the driveway, big letters, paint with water on newspapers, with a stick in the dirt or in sand.

When reading old manuscripts, another thing to keep in mind is that there are a number of letters that we no longer use. For example, the old business signs really don't read 'Ye Olde Tavern'. That Y looking thing is a letter called 'eth', and is pronounced like th in this. The odd S (or is it 2 SS?) in the American revolutionary war time period is an f sound.

If you have more time than you know what to do with, listen in on The History of the English language podcast. The host sometimes reads a short passage in old English, middle English and modern English.

Joylynn, I thought that letter was called thorn in english and eth in scandinavia?

As for cursive, like many things I couldn't do it right up until I could. I hated practising reading, until I hit 6 and then I was off with a reading age of 18 at about 10-11.

My brother has always written in block despite having all the same input as me. The only difference being that he's left handed.

Nicole Alderman wrote:I love writing in medieval calligraphy...and I can't even read most of those! Maybe I just lack skill? But, I have a feeling I'm not the only one. One big reason people want kids to learn cursive is for them to read historical documents. But, if we're aiming for that, shouldn't we also teach them to read medieval calligraphy? Or, maybe we should realize that learning cursive might become a skill that historians learn, and not everyone knows. I still think it's really valuable, but I don't think it's the end of the world if someone can't read or write it. It's a skill, and we don't all have the same skills.

Indeed, about a hundred or so years ago the ability to  speak/read Latin and ancient Greek was the mark of being "educated." While it's great that some people can still do those things, it's also wonderful that most people spend their limited education hours in other areas.

James Alun wrote:Joylynn, I thought that letter was called thorn in english and eth in scandinavia?

I understand thorn to be the th sound as in thanks. I don't currently remember what it looks like.

It's currently usually written as a p with the top of a b on it. Hopefully this shows the lowercase: þ; and this is the capital: Þ. Apparently, it is still used in Icelandic!

In runes, it was written as a triangle stuck to the right of a vertical line. For a while, it was written more slanted, kind of like a funky lower case y. I heard in one video (haven't verified), during the early days of the printing press, English didn't use the letter Y. Since we were using typesets from Germany (where it was invented), we just used the Y for the TH.

Left one is the runic THORN, while the right one is the more commonly seen modern version of THORN

This shows a progression from the runic THORN to the cursive THORN...which looks a lot like a 'y.'

I ran across this this morning.....
https://www.popsci.com/technology/cursive-national-archives/?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter

“Reading cursive is a superpower,” Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog told USA Today. “It’s not just a matter of whether you learned cursive in school, it’s how much you use cursive today.”

The National Archives needs help from people with a special set of skills–reading cursive. The archival bureau is seeking volunteer citizen archivists to help them classify and/or transcribe more than 200 years worth of hand-written historical documents. Most of these are from the Revolutionary War-era, known for looped and flowing penmanship.

edit....just saw the link to the archives was posted earlier in this thread

At school we learned a particular form of cursive writing although I have modified mine over the years. When I was a student, other students in my class would ask to borrow my notes to photocopy (showing my age here) if they had missed a class because I could write quickly, neatly and legibly in cursive. If they saw my writing now they would be horrified as it has degenerated into a barely legible scrawl. My parents and I used to write to each other every week once I left home and they both wrote using a similar form of cursive. Interestingly, my father's script looked neater at a distance but my mother's was easier to read.

This is not the same as cursive but might be interesting for kids and secret messaging.
My mother was a secretary and used shorthand a lot ..she was fast and I've always wished I had learned at least a bit.  I still run across 'notes' of hers that I can't read.
It is very graceful looking and to me total gibberish 🙄

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand

Oh my this is my new thing for the day! 1) I didn't know joined up writing was called cursive, and 2) it never occurred to me that children wouldn't be taught it today. I do wonder about screens and computers and handwriting...
I was taught a version very similar to Abraham's without the extra curls and loops of Rachel's example. Not taking your pen off the page makes writing so much quicker....We used to write out 4 lines of our choice every week as a competition at school and I used to be top of the class for neatness when I was ten....my writing now though is sometimes illegible to the point that even I can't read it if I don't remember what I wrote!

Referring back to the post by Nicole, letters and words have been added to and dropped from the English language over the years.  One of the great ironies is that the letter J was not in the English language when the King James Bible was first written.  In a strict sense, James, John, Judas, and Jesus were never mentioned in the original King James Bible.   The sound we associate with the letter J was written as ii.  And, of course, standardized letters and spelling did not exist.   So, there are many additional challenges when trying to read older cursive documents.

See, I have used my Historical Linguistics class!

Nancy Reading wrote:my writing now though is sometimes illegible to the point that even I can't read it if I don't remember what I wrote!

This is it, what I dislike about cursive and learning handwriting (my four year old is currently learning handwriting at school, her first letters with the little tails ready to join up).  Rhetorical question (not directed at Nancy or anyone else specifically): why waste the effort of writing something at all, if it cannot be read?  Both my husband and son admit they have nearly indecipherable handwriting, and while it is sometimes very entertaining trying to decipher what one of them has written on the calendar or the shopping list;  really, I don't see the point in writing it down in the first place.  Either write legibly or don't bother, as I say in my head when I'm at the grocery store with a paper full of "chuzcy," "isnttenr,"* etc.

*Taken from an actual list written by my husband

why waste the effort of writing something at all, if it cannot be read?

It's an alchemist's trick: You take a concept, solve it into your illegible writting, and it coagulates into your memory. Seeing the bizarre form in the future might remind you about the concept, if you use it farily soon. It only serves you, but that's kind of the point.

Side note: I have a similar problem with the grocery list when quantities are not explicitly written.

G Freden wrote:  Either write legibly or don't bother, as I say in my head when I'm at the grocery store with a paper full of "chuzcy," "isnttenr,"* etc.

To be fair, my "doctor scrawl" is only used on lists where i will do the shopping myself (and spend some time scratching my head at the lrjs and chuzcys until I figure it out. I consider it like sudoku or puzzles, staving off dementia)-- if someone else needs to read it, I have "company" script that I take the time to make readable, because if you want someone to do your shopping for you, you have to give a little!!

G Freden wrote: Either write legibly or don't bother, as I say in my head when I'm at the grocery store with a paper full of "chuzcy," "isnttenr,"* etc.

*Taken from an actual list written by my husband

If in doubt "chuzcy" = choccy and "isnttenr" = biscuits. (works for me!)

I actually write deliberately in capitals to slow myself down if the writing is intended for someone else to read. Not as nice as tidy normal writing would be, but does tend to be more legible.

Some medical schools are sending students for remedial handwriting - indecipherable orders can make people dead!

If I'm writing notes, I use unconnected letters, it's faster for me and more readable for everyone else. I can do nice cursive and decorative writing when I'm thinking art, but that means I'm focusing on the shapes instead of the meanings.

When I was eight, I was the last one in my class who still had to use the "big" lines because my cursive was so rough. My sweet teacher finally told me to go ahead and use the small lines, telling me "It's okay honey. It just means you're going to grow up to be a doctor."