Teaching Cursive Handwriting & Penmanship: What’s the Point?

• Teaching handwriting identifies areas of student weakness.

• Cursive is often easier for students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

• Studies are showing the action of writing, particularly cursive writing, stimulates and engages the brain in ways typing, and even printing, does not.

• In particular, writing notes has been shown to help one retain the information better than typing notes.

• Evidence suggests that cursive helps with the flow of thoughts for better writing.

• It is also believed that writing out words, instead of just typing them, helps one to retain the correct spelling.

• It is often necessary to be able to read cursive for primary sources, and reading cursive activates different parts of the brain than reading print.

• A student will never know if he or she has beautiful print or cursive if he or she never learns how to write these correctly!