When I started the semester off with my new crop of students, I decided I was going to write and type everything in cursive. I made sure the cursive on the board was large enough for the students to read and understand (or so I thought).
I grew up in a public school system, while we did learn cursive in grade school, we were not required to write in cursive on every paper we did (that was more of a catholic school thing). Despite not being required to write in cursive, we were expected to be able to READ and WRITE in cursive when necessary.
So, when I started off this semester writing in cursive - something all students in my opinion need to be able to read and write in, students complained and would not do the work. I quickly realized students did not know how to read in cursive, nor could they write cursive. I could blame this on not being taught cursive since that appears to be the case, as well as typing everything these days instead of writing. Since I teach high school students, I did not have time to stop and teach cursive to the entire class (all three classes mind you), I had to revert to print. Is cursive going the way of the landline? Is it really becoming obsolete? Everyone really needs to know cursive to be able to sign their names for crying out loud. If you don't know cursive, you are to put an X as your signature. Will it get to the point that every person puts an X as their signature instead of their own distinguished signature?
I propose we bring cursive back!
Hi Colleen! I just read another blog post about this (both found on the TPT forum!) You'll have to check it out: www.iheartliteracy.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteThis is a great topic! I hope to read some more thoughts about it! The Learning Lab
As a 4th grade learning support teacher, this is a hot topic with my students’ parents. I have heard both sides of the argument, but I’m not sure which side I’m on. With the advances in technology, there is less of a need to write in cursive. There are still those who write in cursive, so students should at least know how to read it. But so many adults who learned traditional cursive use chicken scratch to represent their signature!
ReplyDeleteI’m really concerned about the negative affect that texting (and auto-correct) has on students’ spelling! “Your” versus “You’re” – the mistakes make me cringe!
Amy Marie
I teach high school and let me tell you, I am horrified at the students' writing. Don't even get me started on "your" vs "you're" - such basic things you learn in elementary school and yet when they are in high school, it's like they've forgotten everything! I spend quite some time reviewing the basics such as grammar. It's horrendous. I about exploded when an entire class tried to argue the proper way to use "sale" - they told me they were taught it's "I have to sale my Ipod to make money".
DeleteWhat an interesting topic. I have always hated my cursive so as soon as I could I switched to print. My print is very neat and legible. I did have to teach cursive to my students in years past and I made sure I taught them the correct way and we both practiced our letters together. My cursive still never got any better!
ReplyDeleteJennifer Dowell
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