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In the age of computers, teaching cursive in schools has become something of a controversy. However, if you or your school are in the camp that says we should continue to teach cursive, Homeroom Teacher has all of the things that you will need to do it right. Here you will find everything from books on how to teach cursive to bulletin board sets that describe cursive techniques to name plates and chart tablets that exhibit the cursive style of penmanship. To browse through all of our cursive items, please click here. Also we have listed below some of the more popular products that we have on teaching cursive. Clicking on any of them will take you to the page which they are on.
Beginning & Practice Cursive
List Price $16.09
Sale Price $15.99
Chart Cursive Alphabet - Zaner-Bloser
List Price $2.69
Sale Price $2.49
Cursive Writing Jumbo Nameplates
List Price $7.49
Sale Price $6.99
I totally agree with all of Ms. Cravens’ reasons for continuing to teach cursive. As an elementary teacher, I find it very frustrating that my own daughter has never been required to use cursive since she finished fourth grade to help keep her skills alive.
Unlike Mr. Rufo, I do not believe that cursive writing has run its course. Printing or using a computer is just not appropriate for letters of condolence or personal thank-you notes. And how about the warm feeling we get when we receive a greeting card, postcard or letter that someone has taken the time to handwrite to us?
As my daughter approaches college, her preferred method of communication is likely to be instant messages. Hopefully, though, she will remember the cursive lessons of long ago taught by her wonderful third-grade teacher whenever personal messages need to be handwritten.
As a parent residing in a school district that has chosen to teach cursive in kindergarten, I am disappointed by Ms. Cravens’ reasons for continuing it. I applaud Mr. Rufo for noting that the purpose of writing is to communicate, and that it should be done in the easiest and most effective way. As a teacher, this is my primary concern.
How can we, in this age of technology and increasing curriculum
demands, be concerned with cursive writing? In my six years in a
middle school resource room, I can count on one hand the number
of students who have used
cursive as a means of communicating.
I taught cursive writing to third-graders for 27 of my 33 years of teaching. Nothing was more pleasing or rewarding than a letter I recently received. It was written on notebook paper in small, but readable cursive. It was from a former student, a reluctant learner who is now a staff sergeant serving in Iraq. Guess there’s a shortage of keyboard time over there. How lucky she had her pencil!
I cannot believe David Rufo’s “loopy” attitude
toward cursive writing. He, as an artist, should understand the
fine motor skills. Cursive writing goes far beyond putting words on paper. It is about the ability to use our hands in
a controlled, decisive manner. Technology can never fully eliminate the need to communicate with pen or pencil.
St. Paul, M
It is true that in this day and age, when all text is presented
in print form and children are taught to use a keyboard from preschool
on, there is very little use for cursive handwriting. Yes, it is
attractive, but that is not a valid reason to spend hours teaching
it year after year.
We must commit ourselves to teaching life skills, and I fail to see where cursive writing is a life skill.
I don’t see how learning to write in cursive increases students’
ability to listen and follow directions. Where is
the research that supports it? Students with small-motor difficulties and those with learning disabilities are better able to communicate through writing when they are not forced to write in cursive.
Here’s what some seventh graders had to say:
I agree with the point that cursive writing is useless. With all the technology that is being developed, cursive writing is becoming obsolete. Besides, wouldn’t teachers rather get a neatly typed paper than a messy, cursive paper they can hardly read? Can you imagine a messy typed paper?
I think that teaching cursive writing is not a waste of time. If you think about it, you use cursive almost every day to sign your signature. Whether it is on checks, credit cards or at the end of typed letters, your name in cursive is a way to authenticate documents. If you hadn’t learned cursive as a child, how would you sign your signature? If we signed our names with print it would be much easier to forge people’s names.
I think that cursive is a waste of time. Kids could be working on more important subjects like math or language arts. Some kids need to spend extra time on these subjects because these subjects can sometimes be the hardest subjects to understand. So when teachers are teaching kids cursive, that is time teachers are taking away from kids to learn multiplication or when to use a semicolon in a sentence.
In the modern working world, the request for a written item to be in cursive is about as common as the request for people who can write in ancient Greek! If the student plans to have a future career in the fields of science or engineering, that student is actually discouraged from using cursive due to its illegibility.
I agree with Janie Cravens about keeping cursive writing in our schools. I am in seventh grade and I remember when I was in second grade learning cursive and wondering when I would ever need it. After years of practice I have become much better at writing in cursive, so much better that it is even faster for me now to write in cursive than in print. I need cursive for my signature, and most people write handwritten letters in cursive so I would need to know how to read it.
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