Research shows that learning cursive can positively impact the development of a students’ reading and writing skills.
Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education in the University of Iowa College of Education, has both the professional expertise and personal experience to validate these findings.
Datchuk, a former director of UI’s Iowa Reading Research Center, was recently featured in an article by IOWA Magazine where he discussed some of the tools the center has developed to help elementary students learn cursive and print.
The following excerpt is from the article:
“Shawn Datchuk was at home when his 8-year-old son, Misha, brought him a birthday card from his grandma. ‘I can’t read this,’ Misha said. When Datchuk, professor of special education at the University of Iowa College of Education, asked why, his son said, ‘because it’s in cursive.’
Datchuk believes these exchanges between children and their parents are common. ‘There tends to be this generational divide on people who grew up using cursive and those who did not,’ he says.
To bridge the divide, Iowa public schools have been required to teach cursive since June 2024. The requirement states that students should begin cursive writing in second grade and show proficiency by third grade; however, not many educational handwriting resources exist.
That’s where CLIFTER (Cursive Letter Identification and Formation for Transcription and Early Reading) comes in. The free tool designed by Datchuk and a team at the Iowa Reading Research Center includes a customizable curriculum, where educators can play videos, download individual letter worksheets, and have students work toward spelling words. The research center also offers a similar resource called LIFTER (Letter Identification and Formation for Transcription and Early Reading) as a print handwriting resource.
Datchuk says the benefits of learning handwriting include and extend well beyond being able to read a grandmother’s card. Here are three reasons why handwriting benefits a young person’s education.”