Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance together as a “pre-celebration” to boost their confidence, then take their exam.
Cursive exercises the brain in different ways than block writing. It’s not strictly about learning and using cursive as a replacement to printing, it’s more about using the brain in a different way and building pathways that otherwise might not get built. Writing the letter G in cursive uses different brain areas than writing it in print.
A similar thing happens in relation to using a keyboard to type words vs physically writing them, the brain functions differently with each method and writing uses more brain to process all the nuance that occurs. Writing the letter G is much different than pressing a G key.
Cursive is likely useful for developing fine motor skills at an age where that’s really important, it probably has benefits for general handwriting legibility while possibly being slightly less boring than just practicing print writing. I’m of the opinion that we should keep cursive, but integrate it into an expanded art class and add calligraphy.
Cursive exercises the brain in different ways than block writing. It’s not strictly about learning and using cursive as a replacement to printing, it’s more about using the brain in a different way and building pathways that otherwise might not get built. Writing the letter G in cursive uses different brain areas than writing it in print.
A similar thing happens in relation to using a keyboard to type words vs physically writing them, the brain functions differently with each method and writing uses more brain to process all the nuance that occurs. Writing the letter G is much different than pressing a G key.
Cursive is likely useful for developing fine motor skills at an age where that’s really important, it probably has benefits for general handwriting legibility while possibly being slightly less boring than just practicing print writing. I’m of the opinion that we should keep cursive, but integrate it into an expanded art class and add calligraphy.