Proof that learning cursive makes you smarter

http://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-to-learn-cursive-2013-10

INTELLIGENCE AND THE LOST ART OF CURSIVE WRITING

By Dr. David Sortino

           Most children are taught to print the first few years of grade school and, depending on the school, either they stay with printing throughout their school careers or they are also taught cursive, usually in second or third grade.

Is learning cursive still important in an age of texting and email?

Most definitely, yes. I particularly side with those who recommend teaching cursive handwriting as a strategy to stimulate brain synchronicity. That is, cursive handwriting helps coordinate the right side of the brain - or visual side - with the left side - or verbal side - of the brain. According to some researchers, the debate is a little like comparing the act of printing versus cursive to painting by numbers versus the flowing rhythmic brush strokes of a "true artist."

        For example, Rand Nelson of Peterson Directed Handwriting believes when children are exposed to cursive handwriting, changes occur in their brains

which allow a child to overcome motor challenges. He says, "the act of physically gripping a pen or pencil and practicing the swirls, curls and connections of cursive handwriting activates parts of the brain that lead to increased language fluency."

        Moreover, the work of Iris Hatfield, creator of the New American Cursive Program, also believes in the connection between cursive writing and brain development as a powerful tool in stimulating intelligence and language fluency.  The movement of writing cursive letters helps build pathways in the brain while improving mental effectiveness," she said. "And, this increased effectiveness may continue throughout the child's academic career."

     Further, Shadmehr and Holcomb of Johns Hopkins University published a study in Science Magazine showing that their subjects' brains actually changed in reaction to physical instruction such as cursive handwriting lessons. The researchers provided PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans as evidence of these changes in brain structure. In addition, they also demonstrated that these changes resulted in an "almost immediate improvement in fluency," which led to later development of neural pathways.  In addition, as a result of practicing these handwriting motor skills, the researchers found that acquired knowledge becomes more stable.

            There are the psychosocial benefits as well. According to author, Mathew Geiger, "As our brains learn to connect our inner worlds to the external universe, we begin to recognize abstract ideas like awareness of others and perception."

Cursive writing (ability) affords us the opportunity to naturally train these fine motor skills by taking advantage of a child's inability to fully control his fingers. This means cursive writing acts as a building block rather than as a stressor, and provides a less strenuous learning experience.

    Parents can be the final deciders as to whether or not to use cursive writing.

You have the research, you have the child.  I encourage you to give it a

try. Go to any school supply store and purchase a wide lined paper pad, appropriate pencils, a white board to copy the alphabet, etc. And then merely support their writing those thank you notes in cursive or sit down with them and practice together. By them a journal and suggest they practice in a daily diary.

It could be quite a learning experience for them and a sharing experience for you.

     David Sortino, a Graton resident, is a psychologist, retired teacher. He is currently director of Educational Strategies, a private consulting company catering to parents and students.E-mail him at davidsortino@comcast.net

http://davidsortino.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/10221/brain-research-and-cursive-writing/

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.