Wilson’s Wednesday Waffle – 2

Hello and welcome to this week’s Wilson’s Wednesday Waffle! This week I tweeted an article from the Guardian titled ‘Using a pen helps us discover thought – but the writing’s on the wall‘. This got me considering, in a similar way as the article discusses, in this digital age of typing and touch keyboards should handwriting still be taught within primary school? I remember completing page after page of loops and links within my purple handwriting book at school and I am not sure that it even contributed to my handwriting style. What I do remember at age fourteen was my English teacher informing me that

“Wilson – no-one on this planet or any other could read your handwriting!”

which was an instruction to change it and quickly. This I did but now find myself in a world that I find myself constantly typing or scribbling and never really working on that perfect handwriting style.

So what are your views –

  • Should handwriting be taught in primary school?
  • Is your handwriting perfect or disastrous?
  • Do you never join up your writing preferring to print?

Leave any comments or thoughts below to the blog, email them to me, add comments on Facebook or add a reply on my twitter @iwilsonysj. Please include your name and stage of your teaching career to the comment. I look forward to hearing your comments and views and my favourite will be awarded a prize in the next comment show.

Post Author: Ian Wilson

Currently working in higher education as a senior lecturer in education. I have a keen interest in e-pedagogy especially how technology and social media can be used to support teaching and learning.

2 thoughts on “Wilson’s Wednesday Waffle – 2

    Becky Smith

    (November 27, 2013 - 8:54 pm)

    I think handwriting should be taught in so far as children need to be taught to correctly form letters. However I feel that writing rows and rows of letters between spaces is rather pointless as mine doesn’t look anything like it did at school. I think that as long as it is legible it is fine. I do join up and I quite like my writing but it has little basis in what I was taught as it’s slanted which was forbidden at school.

    Lauren

    (December 3, 2013 - 4:39 pm)

    I believe that handwriting should be taught so that children can learn how to correctly form letters. However the current practice of writing line after line of letters is a bit pointless as children do not transfer these into their work. During placement I witnessed this as the children did handwriting practice in the morning but by the afternoon when they wrote a piece of writing, they did not use the same style as they had done that morning. This led me to question whether it was actually worth spending so long on the practice. I think as long as children can have legible handwriting then we should not over teach this as it will lead to waste in their lesson time as every child has unique handwriting. Another thing that I noticed is that every school has a different way of teaching how to write so which way is best? How can we teach children handwriting when every school differs on the style? I ended up during placement having a discussion with my mentor about this and she told me that I needed to follow the school policy which means I need to relearn how I write so it fits in with this policy. I do not necessarily agree this is right because my handwriting I feel is perfectly legible and neat so why should I have to adapt for a school when I won’t necessarily teach there for longer than my placement. Also when I go move to teach in another school the handwriting style may not be their accepted way which will mean I will have to keep relearn different styles. Which can lead me to wonder why I was taught one way when it is not acceptable outside of my classroom that I learnt handwriting in.

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