Students will be expected to use cursive writing for all classwork and homework assignments unless
they are told otherwise. Print will be allowed for labeling pictures and graphs and for filling out data in
small spaces on charts.
Typically cursive writing is taught at the end of third grade. Some 5th graders are not yet fluent in
cursive and will need prompting and encouragement as they master this skill. I will remind students
how to form letters and numbers correctly, and I will demonstrate the correct way to hold the pencil,
which some of them do incorrectly.
If a child has learned to form letters and numbers incorrectly, it will be uncomfortable to have to
"relearn". However, the incorrect pencil holding causes the hand and wrist to tire sooner and slows
down the writing process. (Of course, relearning will cause a temporary slow down as well!)
It is also important in math to form numbers correctly so that numbers are easily distinguishable. For
example, zeroes must not look like sixes, fours must not look like nines, and sevens should not look
like ones. Math answers will be marked incorrect if numbers are not written correctly.
