Cursive Logic: a Unique New Method for Teaching Cursive Writing (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

I have a confession. I do not like writing in cursive. Although I learned cursive in school, I never use it now except to form my signature. Because it isn't that important to me, I've been a little lax in teaching my children cursive. I think it's important to be able to sign your name, but, beyond that, I think cursive is just a matter of preference.

Despite my lax approach, my older children learned cursive and one prefers to write in cursive all of the time.My youngest, however, didn't pick it up in the casual introduction that I gave. I've known that I wanted her to practice enough to be able to read in cursive and to sign her name. So I was very interested to see a new approach to teach cursive with CursiveLogic. We received the CursiveLogic Workbook which is a student book and teacher's guide combined. The program is intended for ages 7 and older.

A review of CursiveLogic, a unique new method to teach cursive handwriting

CursiveLogic is a unique way of teaching cursive writing, and it's especially designed for older students to adults who have struggled to learn cursive. It's developer came up with the program methods when she was approached by an adult student with learning disabilities who wanted to learn to sign his name. She developed a method of teaching cursive writing that would use patterns to help students learn letter forms. The story of the program's development is an inspiring one that you can read here.

Rachel, my youngest child, is almost 10. Handwriting has always been a struggle for her- even printing. She struggles with some small motor control in general. The CursiveLogic method turned out to be a really good fit for her.

There are a few things that CursiveLogic does differently to help students learn cursive handwriting.

It groups letters by shape instead of teaching them alphabetically. " Rather than teaching the letters alphabetically, CursiveLogic groups the lowercase alphabet into four groups based on the shape of the initial stroke of the letters and teaches all of the similarly-shaped letters in a single lesson. "
It teaches letters in a connected string as cursive is intended to be written. "CursiveLogic’s letter strings teach students to connect letters from the first lesson, allowing students to internalize the flow of cursive handwriting even before they have learned all 26 letters."
It uses color themes to teach specific patterns. "Each shape string has a color—orange ovals, lime loops, silver swings, and mauve mounds—that reinforces the formation of the basic common shape."
It uses repeated verbal phrases as students learn letters. "Students learn a simple, rhythmical chant that describes the path of the writing instrument as the letter shapes are formed."

The method was a good fit for Rachel because it is simple and natural. The letter groupings made sense to her. She learns well with visual cues, so the color coding also helped her to understand the letter patterns. The program moves at a faster pace than a traditional cursive program that is teaching each letter in isolation. Because of this, Rachel- as an older student- felt as if she were moving faster and actually learning something from the very beginning.

The method was also easy for me to facilitate. The CursiveLogic Workbook has a teacher's guide included. So, as the student moves through the program, the teacher (or parent) knows how to present each section and what the student should be doing.

CursiveLogic's unique method turned out to be a good fit for us. I'm not sure Rachel will ever prefer writing in cursive, but she does have a better grasp of how to write and read letters in cursive.