Cursive writing will be reintroduced to Ontario schools this fall

Italics makes a comeback.

Downgraded to an optional teaching component in Ontario elementary schools in 2006, italics to write will return as a compulsory part of the curriculum from September.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said it is about more than just teaching students how to sign their own name.

“The research has made that very clear italics to write is a critical life skill to help young people express themselves more substantively, think more critically and ultimately express more authentically,” he said in an interview.

“That’s what we’re trying to do, create a very talented generation of young people who master basic skills like reading, to writeand mathematics, these are the foundations of any successful productive life in the country.”

Ontario’s new language curriculum, which takes effect for the new school year, introduces a host of changes, including a renewed focus on phonetics. Many of the additions to the curriculum can be traced back to a report last year from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which found that the province’s public education system was failing students with reading disabilities and others by not using evidence-based approaches .

“If we want to boost reading education, we need to embrace some of those time-tested strategies that have worked for generations,” Lecce said.

“A return to phonetics and eg italics to write is another example where the government is leaning on the evidence and following the voice of many parents who wanted us to truly embrace the practices that have worked for generations.

The curriculum is reintroduced italics to write as an expectation from grade 3 onwards. This is welcome news for language teaching experts.

“I think it’s long overdue,” said Shelley Stagg Peterson, professor of curriculum, teaching and learning at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

“Italics should never have been taken out of the curriculum.”

There isn’t much specific research on it italics to writesaid Peterson, but the work that has been done shows that it’s not just teaching students the skill of to write that script in itself, but it helps reinforce overall literacy.

“The more young writers, beginning writers, use their hands, the more they use another modality to form the letters, the more kinesthetic reproduction helps them think more about the words they to write,” she said.

“So it actually reinforces their reading, as well as their to write.”

Hetty Roessingh, professor emerita at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education, said italics is a valuable skill.

“To take notes, to be literate, to meet the demands of school and civil society, your hands are important and you need to be able to write,” says Roessingh, who specializes in the role of quality handwriting to write outcomes.

“The computer won’t take over.”

Handwriting with a printing style, unlike italicstakes more working memory every time the pencil leaves the page, she said.

But, she said, a key to success is making sure there is enough support for teachers to teach italics the right way.

“You even need more than just buying the resources and putting them on the curriculum,” says Roessingh.

“Teachers need to understand why it was introduced and that it’s important and why it’s important and really empathize, and then they need the support and resources to do the job.”

The four major teachers’ unions have criticized the timing of the new language curriculum, which will be made available for teachers to learn before September with less than two weeks before the end of this school year.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has said the changes are huge and is calling for an implementation period of at least two years.

“The county’s expectation that educators will be ready to teach the revised language curriculum as of September is preposterous,” ETFO president Karen Brown wrote in a statement.

“Their hasty rollout proves how out of touch they are with the reality in the classroom and educators. Curriculum documents are not recipes. You don’t just download them and follow the instructions, using a list of prescribed ingredients. Curriculum is complex.”

Lecce said the government announced changes to the language curriculum last year, after the Human Rights Commission report was published.

“If we work together as we have over the past year…to embrace this change and build that capacity, I am confident that educators will be set for success,” he said.