pictures taken from fishing boat off of neah bay
A little after 10pm it was dark enough for the aurora to begin to show through breaks in the clouds. The combination with the moonlight was nice, until it clouded completely over and began to rain. As late as 3am I could still see the glow through the clouds in the north.
The Forest Service is closing the Glacier Creek Road (Forest Service road 39) near Glacier, Washington to vehicle traffic at mile one close to Thompson Creek due to a washout located at mile 2.7.
Handwriting matters ... But does cursive matter? Research shows: the fastest and most legible handwriters join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citations appear below.) Often, cursive programs and teachers strongly discourage such practices. Students learning cursive are taught to join all letters, and to use different shapes for cursive versus printed letters. (These requirements do not align with the research findings above.) When following the rules doesn't work as well as breaking them, itâs time to re-write and upgrade the rules. The discontinuance of cursive offers a great opportunity to teach some better-functioning form of handwriting that is actually closer to what the fastest, clearest handwriters do anyway. (There are indeed textbooks and curricula teaching handwriting this way. Cursive and printing are not the only choices.) Reading cursive still matters â this takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it. (In other words, we could simply teach kids to _read_ old-fashioned handwriting and save the year-and-a-half that are expected to be enough for teaching them to _write_ that way too ... not to mention the actually longer time it takes to teach someone to perform such writing _well_.) Remember, too: whatever your elementary school teacher may have been told by her elementary school teacher, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Don't take my word for this: talk to any attorney.) CITATIONS: /1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HANDWRITING STYLE AND SPEED AND LEGIBILITY. 1998: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf and /2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. DEVELOPMENT OF HANDWRITING SPEED AND LEGIBILITY IN GRADES 1-9. 1998: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf (NOTE: there are actually handwriting programs that teach this way. Shouldn't there be more of them?) Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the World Handwriting Contest http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
The most important part of this story is that the students are writing in Cursive!!!
Why schools stopped teaching this is beyond me. Â My children, who are in their 40's and 50's now, were the first to be deprived of this important skill, so i taught them at home. Â Now days, Moms are not at home to fill in the things schools leave out.
FYI, students write letters in school ALL THE TIME! This is not an unusual practice. I am a teacher, and my students write letters every year. So do students in every class at our school. Please focus on REAL news stories rather than non-stories like this one.
 @Kel Ok teacher................. Do you or your school teach "Cursive" ????? So are you saying that Cursive is not necessary anymore?? If so , why not?Â
You do understand that the story is about kids learning Cursive right? Oh and by the way I hope your kids are writing letters. I should ask you though ............ How many days off a year , and half days ,do you and your students get? Â I thought so............. A LOT! Â
@Seahawker Yes, our school teaches cursive. I never said I didn't find it necessary, I just said I didn't find this story to be newsworthy, just because letter writing is so common, at least in elementary schools. I think it's a great thing for kids to do. As for your comments on days off, I'll just comment that on Friday I worked 4 hours beyond the school day, 2 on Saturday, and 4 on Sunday. This is typical for me and other teachers.  Yes we do have days off, and I know that's frustrating for parents. But I can assure you that teachers put in many extra hours.
 @Kel Well I was glad to see something positive on the news!  I'm glad your school also is writing letters but so many schools have done away with cursive writing.  When was the last time students have to turn something in in cursive????  I'm sure you want to hear more about gun control then, because that is real news. Or about Miss Washington swim suit.
@Buffy @Kel I'm not sure why you'd think I'd want to read about Miss Washington swim suit. I'm very glad kids are writing letters. It's just so common I didn't find it particularly newsworthy, that's all. By the way, our school does teach cursive.