This summer my friend and mentor, Bonnie Campbell Hill sent around an email asking if anyone had taught cursive handwriting in a sane, fun, productive way. I thought I had, so this is what I sent her:

Differentiated Cursive Work In Grade 3

I think handwriting is like all aspects of learning; children bring different levels of proficiency and therefore need differentiated instruction to grow in their mastery. To do this, I had my students focus less on learning how to write letters in isolation and more on writing words and sentences in cursive.

Early in the first month of school I asked students to copy the following sentence in cursive from the board onto a 1/2 sheet of lined paper: “I am excited to learn to write in cursive!” This sample was dated and kept in my teacher’s notebook so we had something to compare to later samples.
After reviewing each child’s sample, I ability grouped students. The early cursive writers were given the school purchased handwriting book to begin working on individual letter formation. The writers who had some control of cursive, but needed work on specific letters were grouped together with both the handwriting book and several sheets of large-lined paper. (The kind used in the lower grades with the red-dotted line down the middle.) The final group, who had a strong mastery of cursive handwriting, was given standard lined paper.
What followed for the rest of the year was a series of twice weekly handwriting sessions, which used poems, selected by the students for practice. With classical music playing, children worked at their own pace on either letter formation or copying poems into cursive. Ultimately, students would find that there were letters they needed to review and would use the alphabet guide in the back of the handwriting book or the individual letter practice pages in the handwriting book to help them review and work on that particular letter as they completed their poems. (Myself or another student would also demonstrate letter formation on the white board when it was requested.)
By the end of the year everyone had a “Poetry Pad” filled with large construction paper pages each containing a photocopied poem and the student’s handwritten copy next to it. Some students had 3 poems completed plus the bulk of the handwriting book. Others had worked on 20 poems over the year.
Finally, right before our spring parent-teacher conference, I asked students to write the sentence “I am excited to learn to write in cursive!” again on a lined sheet of paper and we compared this with the sample from earlier in the year. Students reflected on their improvement and on how their handwriting had changed and become more personalized. For many students they simply didn’t believe the first sample was theirs. Parents enjoyed seeing the growth students had made in handwriting over the year. By using the samples- it was readily apparent to all of us!

Photo credit: http://www.cowart.com/nikon/macros/page1/Handwriting.jpg