AUGUSTA, Ga. () – Georgia schools are re-introducing cursive writing for the upcoming school year.

Third, fourth and fifth grade students will learn cursive with a goal for them to be able to read and write in this style fluently.

The updated English Language Arts standard will start this upcoming school year.  

Laurie Cook, the Executive Director of RISE Augusta, believes that relying on typing with computers or iPads in education may hinder children’s ability to retain information effectively.

“Writing requires mental focus on each letter, and even as it becomes second nature, it engages the brain in a way that enhances memory and has a profound impact,” Cook explained.

Third graders are set to embark on learning this new skill by mastering how to read and write in cursive. Meanwhile, fourth and fifth graders will dedicate time to refining their handwriting with the goal of bolstering their communication skills.

The Director of the Harris Literacy Center, Dr. Betsy VanDeusen, says cursive is beneficial for our brains.

“It actually loosens up other brain activity by understanding the formations of cursive. It builds on what we already know about print,” said VanDeusen.

She continued on to say, “There are ways that we can do handwriting with real literacy work; dictated sentences, helping them with journal entries. It doesn’t have to be just a rote thing, we can work on handwriting while we’re also working on important other literacy skills.” 

She tells me they will continue to help kids with their writing skills.

“We always watch kids writing, you can tell by looking at it but the one thing we watch for is how many strokes they use to make a letter. I’ve seen students use five different strokes for an ‘a’, an ‘a’ should be one continuous thing. We really are practical when we see that type of thing, we intervene immediately,” VanDeusen said.

Learning this traditional skill can improve literacy rates in areas like reading, writing and spelling.