3 ms·

Do you have recommendations for exposing/introducing/teaching some kind of cursive to an American home-schooled 15 year old? On the one hand, he's in college c

• burfog 8y ago
  I did exactly that. I had kids studying for AP Chemistry ages 10 to 16, and I think that is when I sat them all down to learn handwriting. I hadn't planned to teach it, because I thought I never used it, but then one day I wrote a non-technical essay (something I hadn't done in many years) and felt a strangely strong urge to use cursive. I sat everybody down at a table and had them copy my text from a whiteboard. I wrote sentences about random crazy stuff. I would then go over their text, making them fix each spot that could create ambiguity. Explain the ambiguity so that they understand why it is a problem. (if your 'f' has a lower loop that is wide or doesn't descend much, it could be confused with a 'b', etc.) Most days we'd do a few dozen sentences. It wasn't long before they started to be decent at it. I sure know what you mean about the funny gaps. It is easy to forget something while focusing on other stuff. At one point I had a 14-year-old who couldn't really read. I threw him into AP Chemistry, making him read the book out loud so I could correct him. That worked! It was miserable at first, because he needed correction every few words, but now he reads well.