I`m sure we all agree,those of us who frequent your site.
I have begun thinking that those who write policy,core curriculum standards,have never taught a child.
Same goes for MOE directive,they have no idea how many kids they leave on the side of the road,school board excuse,the MOE does not endorse this kind of instruction.
Loopholes that support failure.Think Swiss cheese.

I was once at a PD session where some decried the loss of penpersonship. One woman rose and said “where can someone go in life with poor penpersonship?” A wag at the back said “they could be a doctor”.

My most recent visit to 2 Drs, both took the whole history and gave the presciption on the computer and printed it out. They did sign it however.

Doug,you`re so progressive!

“But according to the University of Washington’s Ms. Berninger, though cursive is usually faster, there’s no inherent benefit to cursive or print. She recommended teaching both forms. Mr. Graham said that “about two-thirds of kids actually mixed two scripts together,” and those who mix forms wrote more quickly.”

Handwriting is so very important to improve and develop the cognitive processes of children. Yet, it is so often ignored, especially for students with the invisible disabilities. Much like the memorization of poetry, that is no longer practice in the schools. And yet the cognitive benefits in memorization of poetry and handwriting are ignored for the most part in today’s K to 12 systems.

“As far as I’m concerned, kids need to have a legible and fluent style of handwriting, and they need to have fluent typing skills,” he said. “But that’s because I don’t want kids to have to think about those things. I want them thinking about what they’re going to say and how they’re going to say it.”

Having fluent handwriting, sure help my LD child thinking about what she would put on paper, rather than worrying about how the letter K was form, or to remember that the letter ‘t’ needs a cross bar, and the letter ‘o’ is a circle,

I don’t think that it would be take too much imagination to make sure that handwriting were a regular part of the school day.

I remember feeling so proud in grade 2 that we were able to learn cursive. When I attend conferences and meetings, I’m still an avid “writer”

As students move into the older grades, I think that calligraphy would be a good transitional skill.This would underline the sense of art that is inherent in well executed forms.

This touches on another discussion that Stephen and I were having earlier.  It seems pretty straightforward to me that the application of oneself to the rigour of penmanship, is in itself the long-term benefit.

  My wife and I came to the school we work in (in the far north of B.C) to find it in total shambles.  Progressivist and ‘feelings-based’ methodology had been the mainstay, and seemingly as a result the school atmosphere was “kids rule” and whether or not work was even attempted, was based on adolescent whim.  Admin covered up the learning deficits with their fancy new interpretations of how to read the learning outcomes…  so what if the students totally bombed the provincial exams… they got 90% in the course work! Success!

  My wife and I both went straight at this unworkable situation with the same tactic.  The students needed to know that their whims weren’t the determinant of our classes. 

  She started by integrating handwriting.  The concept was that it was repetitive, calming, accessible to any level of learner, and most of all ritualistic; a routine.

  Now it is a year later and handwriting has been one of the many successful implementations that have corrected how the high school functions.  The school is much different and kids are acting like students more and more.  There are also many other efforts that have been implemented which helped to change the atmosphere too. For brevity, I won’t go into these.

  I have many more examples of how teaching something (anything!) to mastery has created a student out of a chaotic bundle of anger.  I have seen a 7 or 8 year history of total defiance to instructors, turn around over the better course of a year using this simple strategy.

  And for the record, all of these kids are from impoverished, messed up families, and most of them carry the obligatory labels that go along; FAS, ADHD, LD, etc etc etc. Those eponyms don’t seem to hold ‘em back too much when the instruction is straight forward.

Above sentiments notwithstanding, I had to chuckle at the idea of a Handwriting Summit…sounds a little severe, especially when you consider that it was convened by the company that stands to lose a whole lot if their handwriting curriculum assumes a role on the sidelines!

How much time would it actually require to teach good penmanship anyway?  I’m not being critical but it seems things are so tightly wound that what is traditionally seen as a rudimentary part of normal classroom training is now only possible at the expense of something else

Handwriting is in a crisis, and the lack of proper handwriting instruction, prevents the steady progress of writing. Students are too busy trying to remember letter formation, and have no energy left to deal with the content of the writing.

Madteacher and his wife are examples of what it takes to tackle the neglected foundation skills in a high school. Mastery is the key, for the foundation skills. If not the students will not have what it takes to do high school work that is beyond general work.

John L.,

All explicit teaching has been replaced with discovery learning,learning through play,in the early years.
Explicit instruction has been replaced wit this and teachers are now asked to facilitate.

I heard the Agenda last night and the Liberals brag ad nauseum about PISA scores,I don`t get it,my friends tell me there has never been more L.D. and boys are crashing.
All this is due to non phonemic instruction.
LD rise is in many cases manufactured by lack of instruction,the kids begin to look dyslexic.They`re not.
Anyway,I agree that all letter shapes and the sounds they make need to be taught.

Amen to that Nancy. 

John, you are right about how such exercises can only be done at the expense of something else.  Unfortunately, one of the most important things I have learned in my years of teaching in ‘at-risk ‘communities is the following.  EVERY skill is seriously lacking in these students, and behaviour is outrageous.

The students have been passed fraudulently, without actually developing the skills that they need to do school work.  As the teacher you are faced with the quandary of whether or not you soldier on and teach say, legitimate grade 11 English, or do you try to tackle all of the fundamentals that they are missing?

  I always opt for the fundamentals, but I also make the students feel like they are doing something important.  (which in fact they are)

  You’re right, these exercises are at the expense of *something else*, but the reality is that those other things that they should be learning are beyond their skill set, so teaching legitimate grade-level material is a total bust.  The students can’t do it, they get mad, they skip, they act rudely, and fail the course.

  On the other hand, there is some good that comes out of a hard-line stance of “maintaining the standard” and legitimately teaching grade-level work when it is beyond the students.  The good is that it gives them a bit of a reality check, which is badly needed.  You must be careful about this though, and only give the class an occasional sample of some of the topics.  Furthermore, you can only do this tactic well after they are firmly with you. This is after the class has started their real skill development, and they trust you.  If they have not learned enough to even recognize the intensity of the REAL grade level work, your effort is useless.  What results is the default setting in these students which is:  just disengage with it.  Don’t know, don’t care.

  The students in these communities only have their own school as an example of how things should go.  I lay the reality check on them now and then, and mask the fundamental skill teaching with seriousness and praise on my part.  I do this so that the students don’t feel too embarrassed about learning grade 3 level work when they are 16 (and older actually). 

Truthfully, I haven’t seen any student in all my years balk at the learning of fundamental skills.  Unfortunately, most of them don’t even know that they need the fundamental skills.  This is sad, because the reason they are so naive is that nobody (no teacher) has ever addressed the deficits that they bear.  In all of their years of school they haven’t been able to ‘get it’ -whatever ‘it’ has been.  Worse yet is that nobody actually got down and did the teaching that would have resulted in real learning. 

LIke I said before, the students want to be able to do things… even if they don’t know that they want to.  Everybody likes showing how much they know and what they can do.  Don’t you?

I heard the Agenda last night and the Liberals brag ad nauseum about PISA scores,I don`t get it,my friends tell me there has never been more L.D. and boys are crashing.

Here are a few things you need to be aware of John.

There is no time in Canada’s past when we read better than we read today.

Boys are not crashing. Girls are moving ahead faster. Frankly they work harder, and they don’t waste time on video games.

LD ? School boards identify as much as they possibly can because they get more money and they cannot get enough money any other way.

Boys are indeed crashing, and girls begin to crash in the middle school grades, and by high school, the same percentages of boys and females with reading, writing and numeracy issues. In the LD research papers, there should be no difference in the number of boys and girls identified as having LD. But there is in the schools, where it splits 2/3rd for LD boys, and 1/3 for LD girls. Girls are not identified early, because of the misconceptions that are generated within the public education system. Girls are not moving ahead faster, when standards are dropping in the 3 Rs, as well as grade inflation, that a C is now a B. The sad part of it, it hurts all students, and their future. Quite the wake-up call, when some of the students start to received failing grades at the post-secondary level. Weakness in the foundation does it Doug, but low standards will guarantee all students are put at risk in their future endeavours at the post-secondary level.

As for LD funding, where is it Doug? If it was funded, than the LD students would received the remediation in the 3 Rs. But there is no extra funding for remediation of the 3 Rs, and never has been. The extra funding is access to SE services, and the psycho-educational assessments. What is given, is the dumb-down work and most LD students never received the remediation for their weaknesses in language and numeracy.

News to me, that girls don’t play video games. Where are the stats for that one Doug, as well as the stats for SE funding per student?

Madteacher writes, ”  Truthfully, I haven’t seen any student in all my years balk at the learning of fundamental skills.  Unfortunately, most of them don’t even know that they need the fundamental skills.  This is sad, because the reason they are so naive is that nobody (no teacher) has ever addressed the deficits that they bear.  In all of their years of school they haven’t been able to ‘get it’ -whatever ‘it’ has been.  Worse yet is that nobody actually got down and did the teaching that would have resulted in real learning.”

My daughter’s favourite saying on learning the foundation skills in the days of re-teaching, “Why didn’t the teacher teach it?”  And the young friends of my child would say the same thing to me. They are thought they were incapable of writing, but what was lacking the foundation skills that were never taught.

Video games was part and parcel of resources at home, and my child and her friends had so much fun playing the brain games, the grammar games, and what I call general knowledge games. As Madteacher states, everybody likes to show how much they know and what they can do.

The educrats can bragged all they want about the PISA results, but soon they will no longer be able to avoid the issue, when OECD is calling for caution not to use the PISA results, to avoid looking at the low achievement in literacy and numeracy in the K to 12 system, and the adult population where almost half have low literacy and numeracy issues. The second reason, PISA represents a small sample, and certainly does not represent a large cross-section of Canada, and the provinces. OECD are calling for countries to place the emphasis on testing results within the country, as well as other education data that is being tracked. If Ontario and the other provinces did that, painting a rosy picture will be no more.

I agree with you mad teacher!
Authentic learning that the student KNOWS is contributing and alleviating his sham of trying to show up every day and do something when he doesn`t know how to do the basics is GREATLY appreciated by any student.

Real self esteem comes from mastery and achievement,not pretending.
You can`t achieve anything when you`re missing the basics!