Freddie has been sent home with a sheet not dissimilar to this. His target for this term is to learn all the letter sounds. He knows all the letter sounds, so is that a good target?
Mind you he is struggling to regognise some of the letters when presented in this way. I mean just look at the r and v. And Fergus really struggles with this. I can see the reasoning behind it and maybe Freddie will cope, but is this really appropriate for an 8 year old, possible dyslexic, who is already struggling to recognise/differentiate letters? I suppose it does mean that, eg, b is not a mirror image of a d, etc.
I could cope with this, as the actual letter shapes are more clear, the upstrokes being secondary. I think having them all the same thickness leads to an artificial writing style: I've seen it. And anyway, it is print that they see all around them, so that is what they know. I think for reading it should be print, surely? Isn't this making it a bit too complicated for them at the beginning? Me and my two girls manged to move from print to joined up writing at an appropriate stage...
And what's wrong with the Montessori cursive anyway? it has flicks, but not the upstrokes, which, as far as I'm concerned are not actually part of the letter.I just bumped into ed psyc H for a coffee, and had a great chat about this. She says most parents hate this- they seem to do it in all the schools round here from day one, although there are many incongruities, ie the alphabet curve (in print) on the classroom wall. The one thing I've seen in Freddie's classroom is the interactive whiteboard, which they have to drag their own name onto the cow (for milk-ordering!) each morning. It's written in a cursive font, but I think this is a lot moe readable than a single letter.
But really I am tending to think at the moment...
