Georgia to restart cursive writing classes for elementary students

 In WSBTV.com. Read the whole story here.

ATLANTA — The 2025 school year in Georgia will start in August and this time, it’s bringing back an older lesson plan for its newer students.

Starting in August, third through fifth graders will have lessons on how to write in cursive, also called script.

When students return to classrooms after summer break ends, the Georgia Department of Education will begin cursive writing courses for public school students.

The instruction was added as part of the updated English Language Arts Standards curriculum for the 2025-2026.

As part of the move to teach cursive again, the GaDOE put out a guidance packet for parents to help with the handwriting courses.

From the Guidance Packet:

Overview of Georgia’s K-12 English Language Arts Standards 

Handwriting, a basic tool for life, assists with the development of both fine motor skills and working memory skills; automatic handwriting skills facilitate active learning and efficient communications (Georgia Department of Education, 2024). 

Georgia’s K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) Standards are intentionally designed to provide a strong literacy foundation beginning in the early grades. In addition to the K-12 domains of Practices, Texts, and Language, the K-5 grade band also includes the Foundations domain. The big ideas within this domain include (I) Phonological Awareness, (II) Concepts of Print, (III) Phonics, (IV) Fluency, and (V) Handwriting. 

Georgia’s K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) Standards require students in kindergarten through fifth grade to learn to communicate effectively through reading and writing using print and cursive handwriting. 

Georgia’s K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) Standards introduce cursive writing in the third grade. In fourth and fifth grade, students continue cursive handwriting practice to build fluency and automaticity in handwriting to communicate effectively. Research indicates that students need at least two years of instruction to automatize a handwriting process (Wolf, Abbott, & Berninger, 2016) and that automatized handwriting significantly improves the quantity and quality of students’ writing (Van Cleave, 2020). The goal is for students to read and write in cursive fluently and automatically. By automatizing these transcription processes, students free up their working memory, allowing them to focus on higher-level writing skills."