Supportive new research

Learning Cursive in the First Grade Helps Students according to research from the University of Montreal.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/learning-cursive-in-the-first-grade-helps-students

Today Show article on cursive

The poll by the Today show indicates a strong majority want to keep cursive:

http://www.today.com/moms/learning-cursive-writing-it-worthwhile-or-wasted-time-8C11045379

Psychology Today article supports learning cursive

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201308/biological-and-psychology-benefits-learning-cursive

Why teach handwriting in the digital age?

Check out this article for some answers.
http://bit.ly/18FCwHr

Several comments appear from a person who is often quoted as if they were credentialed as a handwriting expert when this is not the case. People who give themselves a big presence on the internet by commenting on one blog after the other are often seen as knowing what they are talking about. One wonders how much research is done by those who write articles when they are searching for someone to talk to on each side of an issue, whatever that issue may be.

FOUR Benefits of writing by hand

http://mentalfloss.com/article/33508/4-benefits-writing-hand

Flugle, Starnash, and Wimpolly: How Sight-Reading Affects Reading Ability

With phonics systems in place in most classrooms, many more children are picking up literacy with relative ease. However, 20% of children in English-speaking nations reach age 11 unable to pass a reading test.

Why?

Everyone has different learning styles, be that visual, kinaesthetic, or auditory. Kids with strong visual processing ability often favour this over the auditory (which is essential for phonics) when it comes to learning how to read. These children may or may not be diagnosed with dyslexia around the age of 7 or 8. Gifted visual learners will pick up the alphabet and simple words through sight-memorization and repetition very quickly.

But they are using a technique that will eventually fail them.  

As vocabulary and spelling gets more complex, these kids can no longer rely on their sight memory or the context as a trigger and so they begin to guess very wildly. The visual memory was simply not designed to hold thousands of combinations of fine-tuned black squiggly lines! That is why the auditory function is so essential when learning to read.

There is a simple test you can use to assess whether a child – or adult – is a sight-reader rather than a decoder. If they can read the first paragraph ok, but find the second paragraph much more difficult and the third nearly impossible, then they are using sight-memorization strategies to process text. This means they are very gifted visually, but have been misapplying this strength to the reading context.

Paragraph 1 (normal):
The country farm was in a deep valley. It covered 100 acres of green, rolling hills and in the winter was buried under a thick layer of heavy snow. Ben the farmer thought it was the best place to be in the entire world.
Paragraph 2 (letters mixed up):
His two-door, sporty car was panited oarnge, with braod, yleolw stirpes running aolng the roof. Jim lvoed his Mstunag more than aynthnig in his life.
Paragraph 3 (nonsense):
The brin, smight fload is where glagged balfs trow fron with oabs and snuts and flates of shrab. If you vroy after them juffedly with smoor and slirk, you will gwipe a shnook.

Guided Phonetic Reading technique was developed for sight-readers with weak auditory function. It is a revolutionary approach to remedial literacy that actually utilizes these children’s bright visual processing cortex as a tool to teach them.

See how this works over at Morgan Learning website. Morgan Learning publishes the Easyread System, an online course for children with highly visual learning styles, dyslexia, auditory processing disorder and more. It works through short, fun, daily lessons that are fully supported with one-on-one coaching and consultation.

Hartford Courant article

I was just sent an article that was in the 4/28 issue of the Hartford Courant in Connecticut.  The Assumption School in Manchester, CT, has a student who won the State Level and is eligible to compete in the Annual Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest (I didn't know it existed).  More than 285,000 students entered this year's 22nd annual contest with the winner to be awarded later this month.  

In the article, it explained that at the Assumption School, students learn manuscript and cursive by the 3rd grade and receive 15 minutes of daily handwriting instruction - the amount recommended by experts.  A teacher at the school stated that there is significant research showing handwriting instruction enhances both cognitive and motor skills development and activates regions of the brain associated with thinking, short-term memory and language.

Irene Lambert

Interview with Fiona Summons

From Australian handwriting professional, Jasmin Martin:

Last year in December, as I was in Australia, Ingrid Seger Woznicki and I interviewed Fiona Summons of the Alison Lawson Centre. She is a specialist in dyslexia and treats children and adults with dyslexia as well as the other 'dyses'. She in particular is a supporter of handwriting being kept on the school curriculum. We interviewed Fiona and a series of videos with the questions has been put together (I will try to do this a little more professionally later) but for now if anyone is interested the videos are on our web site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqTSktL6QM&list=PLyX27TSriW-XFFrv9a-d6Z00LMDQCvL_X

You can watch all of them in sequence by clicking on the link above. The question posed and which she answers is in the title of the video.

Top Tips on practicing cursive writing . . .

http://www.amazinghandwriting.org/top-tips-on-cursive-handwriting-practice/

What Learning Cursive Does for Your Brain

Excellent article, highly recommended:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201303/what-learning-cursive-does-your-brain