About Handwriting for Our Young Students
Parents of young Elementary students at Trinity Prep have no doubt noticed that I do not choose a handwriting curriculum for their child. Why?
I've made this decision for several reasons:
One, some parents have a very strong preference for a certain handwriting curriculum - based on their experience with their older children. We did not have a strong reason for asking parents to change to a new system that their child would use at home.
Two, handwriting is developed through practice, practice, practice; which means, it will be developed at home. We don't need or want to devote class time to it. Parents should select a curriculum they want to use. All of them will lead to the same result: legible handwriting. (We hope!)
Three, my path to handwriting changed over the years of educating my own three children. My eldest was enrolled in public school through 5th grade, where he followed the traditional path of learning manuscript (to print) followed by cursive the next grade level. I didn't give it much thought; I had done the same in my elementary years. But as I began homeschooling, I began researching - EVERYTHING. I spent hundreds of hours investigating math, language arts, science, history curricula and resources. I experienced the trial and error that all homeschooling parents experience, trying curricula, discarding some, keeping others. And in the course of all that research I found myself challenging assumptions I hadn't even closely examined. One of these was the path to handwriting.
On the Well-Trained Mind parent forum I learned about Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting system. And I thought, "This is genius. ONE system of writing, not two." Think about it - just as our young students master printing, we turn around and ask them to learn a second system, cursive. Some of the letters are very different for cursive from their manuscript form. But the Getty-Dubay system teaches children to write in a more italic style that can be modified simply to a cursive style. It makes sense - which is not surprising, considering it was developed by two career school teachers, Barbara Getty and Inge Dubay.
Remember, the purpose of cursive is to facilitate speedier writing that flows easily. The student does not pick up his/her pencil after each letter, which interrupts the flow from one letter formation to the next. Early on, the child needs to form each letter individually to reinforce his/her understanding of the letter and its sounds. But for fluid writing that facilitates expression of ideas, we need letter connections. Hence, cursive.
In the Getty-Dubay system, the student learns to write manuscript letters at a 5-10 degree angle from a straight vertical line (see the website for examples). After mastering this italic-style manuscript, the student learns to add a few 'connectors' so s/he may write without lifting the pencil from the paper - a version of cursive.
Given this experience with my youngest child, I am unable to endorse learning the traditional manuscript-then-cursive path of handwriting, though I will not disdain it for any of our Trinity Prep students. We simply make it a parent decision.
For a very handy comparison of different handwriting systems, from the very traditional to Getty-Dubay (probably the least traditional!), see this webpage by Christianbook.com:
Comparison of Handwriting Systems
Happy Handwriting!
--- Leslie Kent, blessed to serve as
School Director for Trinity Prep of Keller
I've made this decision for several reasons:
One, some parents have a very strong preference for a certain handwriting curriculum - based on their experience with their older children. We did not have a strong reason for asking parents to change to a new system that their child would use at home.
Two, handwriting is developed through practice, practice, practice; which means, it will be developed at home. We don't need or want to devote class time to it. Parents should select a curriculum they want to use. All of them will lead to the same result: legible handwriting. (We hope!)
Three, my path to handwriting changed over the years of educating my own three children. My eldest was enrolled in public school through 5th grade, where he followed the traditional path of learning manuscript (to print) followed by cursive the next grade level. I didn't give it much thought; I had done the same in my elementary years. But as I began homeschooling, I began researching - EVERYTHING. I spent hundreds of hours investigating math, language arts, science, history curricula and resources. I experienced the trial and error that all homeschooling parents experience, trying curricula, discarding some, keeping others. And in the course of all that research I found myself challenging assumptions I hadn't even closely examined. One of these was the path to handwriting.
On the Well-Trained Mind parent forum I learned about Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting system. And I thought, "This is genius. ONE system of writing, not two." Think about it - just as our young students master printing, we turn around and ask them to learn a second system, cursive. Some of the letters are very different for cursive from their manuscript form. But the Getty-Dubay system teaches children to write in a more italic style that can be modified simply to a cursive style. It makes sense - which is not surprising, considering it was developed by two career school teachers, Barbara Getty and Inge Dubay.
Remember, the purpose of cursive is to facilitate speedier writing that flows easily. The student does not pick up his/her pencil after each letter, which interrupts the flow from one letter formation to the next. Early on, the child needs to form each letter individually to reinforce his/her understanding of the letter and its sounds. But for fluid writing that facilitates expression of ideas, we need letter connections. Hence, cursive.
In the Getty-Dubay system, the student learns to write manuscript letters at a 5-10 degree angle from a straight vertical line (see the website for examples). After mastering this italic-style manuscript, the student learns to add a few 'connectors' so s/he may write without lifting the pencil from the paper - a version of cursive.
Given this experience with my youngest child, I am unable to endorse learning the traditional manuscript-then-cursive path of handwriting, though I will not disdain it for any of our Trinity Prep students. We simply make it a parent decision.
For a very handy comparison of different handwriting systems, from the very traditional to Getty-Dubay (probably the least traditional!), see this webpage by Christianbook.com:
Comparison of Handwriting Systems
Happy Handwriting!
--- Leslie Kent, blessed to serve as
School Director for Trinity Prep of Keller
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