Top 5 reasons we should not stop handwriting in schools (and ICT resources to help!)

Earlier this month handwriting was in the news as the state of Indiana dropped the requirement for children to learn cursive handwriting. At first I could kind of see their point- if I did not work in a school, the need for handwriting throughout my life would be greatly limited. However, on further reflection there are a few key reasons why handwriting should continue to be taught.

Top 5 reasons we should keep handwriting in schools
1) If you want to look arty and thoughtful to impress people then handwriting poetry in a battered journal is the only way- an iPad won't cut it.
2) It is lame to email thank-you letters.
3) In the event of a zombie apocalypse survivors computers will be useless and survivors will need handwriting to keep a record of humanity.
4) Cheques are here to stay.
5) We must keep handwriting to stop the greetings card industry from crumbling. E-cards are rubbish apart from Someecards (WARNING, some of these are definitely NSFW).

Handwriting resources
Now that we have established that handwriting is important, lets have a look at some of the free resources available to help. The handwriting section of Primary Resources has plenty of guidelines and paper to print out.

If you are using Smart Notebook, then the 'page recording' function can be a great way to demonstrate handwriting. Once you have recorded yourself writing a word, then you can leave it on loop, freeing you up to go around the room and check on children's progress. This Youtube video explains in more detail how to use the page recording function.

All about fonts
The best way of modelling handwriting is probably hand-write signs around the classroom and create worksheets manually. However, fonts in a handwritten style can be very useful and it is easy to find, download and install them. Sassoon Fonts are high quality cursive fonts including a fancy one that automatically and accurately joins up letters as you type. They are available for purchase in various bundles for use in a school.

There are also lots of free options available, I found some promising looking ones on Fontspace. When you download a font it will be in a compressed 'zip' file. Once you have extracted the file, you just need to right-click and choose 'install' (for Windows Vista and Windows 7). If you are on Windows XP you will need to copy the extracted file into your 'fonts' directory (usually found in /windows/fonts). For more help installing fonts watch this video from a helpful young man on Youtube.

D.I.Y. fonts
Another advanced option is to make your own font. Or challenge your students to make their own fonts. I'm sure there is a creative art/ICT/literacy lesson in there somewhere (design a font that your favourite Roald Dahl character might use). There are a number of paid options to do this, but I thought MyScriptFont looks fun and should suffice.