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Dr. Sam Bommarito interviews Kate Gladstone about her new book Read Cursive Fast.
As my readers know, I am often on Twitter discussing various literacy issues. I try to talk with a variety of folks with various literacy views. Kate Gladstone was one of those people. She has a compelling personal story. As you will find out in the interview, she is Dyslexic and Autistic. Among her problems was her inability to read and write things written in cursive. She was able to develop things that let her succeed in learning to read and write cursive, despite any problems being posed by those conditions. Her book Read Cursive Fast outlines the innovative things she did to help both her handwriting and her ability to read cursive. The book is a valuable resource for children and adults with similar problems. Here is a brief biography of Kate:
Here is the YouTube interview:
Here is the interview discussion. Topics are time stamped:
Various Resources from Kate
Link to order Read Cursive Fast (publishers detail page) LINK
Link to ReadCursiveFast.com (contains related articles by Kate, supplementary materials to enrich and add to the contents of the book, reviews of the book open brackets with link to the site of the reviewers], and more) LINK.
Link to “Oops, I Forgot How To Read Cursive” by Kate Gladstone LINK
Link to “When the ‘Different’ Learner Meets Cursive” by Kate Gladstone LINK
Link to “Handwriting and the Autism Spectrum” by Kate Gladstone (published in AUTISM SPECTRUM NEWS for April 2022) LINK
Distributors of Kate’s other current products:
SuperStyluScripTipTastic Pen — from Therapro LINK
TriOn customizable pencil grips —from The Therapy Shoppe LINK
— and from National Autism Resources (NAR) LINK
Stage-Write Raised-Line Handwriting Paper in 6 sequenced formats —from Therapro LINK
TO CONTACT KATE ABOUT HANDWRITING INPUT/OUTPUT ISSUES (remediation, instructional design and recommendations, curriculum selection consultation, disability-related handwriting issues, ESL-related handwriting issues, and adult/professional handwriting issues) — e-mail Kate@ReadCursiveFast.com and make sure that your subject-line includes the word “help” (NOT case-sensitive)
For Kate’s other handwriting endeavors: HandwritingThatWorks.com LINK.
Dr. Sam’s Blogs for the Start of the new School year– As the new school year begins, I am continuing to arrange for additional interviews with authors of some of the many professional books that have been published lately. I’m trying to arrange to talk to authors from various points of view about literacy.
As indicated last week, in addition to these interviews, I will post a blog about my plans for my push-ins this fall at the school where I serve as a pro bono reading consultant in grades K-3. I’ll be teaching two full days a week, doing large group, small group, and individual sessions. I hope that talking about what I’ll be doing will allow readers to see how I adapt my instruction to the many ideas I’ve gotten from my lifelong search for common ground and common sense. After that, I arranged for an interview with the mom of the student I worked with this summer. She is a speech & language teacher. We will explore how the two of us together were able to help her daughter, who is now going into 4th grade, overcome her problem of word guessing. So, as we begin the new school year, I hope this blog will provide you with a great deal of interesting and useful information. Hope everyone is having a great start to their new school year!
Happy Reading and Writing.
Dr. Sam Bommarito, aka the centrist who uses ideas from all sides to inform his teaching
Copyright 2022 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the author’s view and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
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Thank you! I’ve been mentioning this on Facebook, Twitter, and to various colleagues!
Re:
“ Her book Read Cursive Fast outlines the innovative things she did to help both her handwriting and her ability to read cursive” —
To be precise, Sam, this current book (which you’ve read) indeed outlines how to read conventional cursive, based on how I finally acquired the skill. (It makes explicit what I had eventually acquired implicitly though the related process of teaching myself how to write functionally: which does not necessarily equate with producing every loop and curlicue and join and other details of a conventional cursive handwriting form.)
The book has also, as we discussed, enabled people to write in cursive, if they so wished, once they could finally see the oft-obscured relationships between cursive-as -we-know-it and the various other forms of our handwriting —
Nevertheless, of course, writing legibly and rapidly isn’t synonymous with writing in cursive-as-we—know-it: You will recall that I mentioned, during the interview, the research and other evidence showing that the fastest and most legible handwriters do not, for instance, join absolutely all of their letters, but join only those that can most easily be joined. (
Similarly, as I likewise mentioned on air, the highest-speed highest-legibility handwriters tend towards significantly print-like renditions of the many letters whose conventional printed and cursive forms “disagree.”
That’s one of the many reasons that I hope to write a follow – a book which will empower others to rise with maximum flexibility at a maximum practical speed — This book will be written and published when, and only when, sales from the existing book (READ CURSIVE FAST) h a nave grown large enough to satisfy my publisher that it’s the ”write” time to go ahead with more of my work. Until then, of course, if you’re interested in seeing me write on how to improve your own handwriting, A good way to increase the possibility of such a work would be to contact my publisher: NationalAutismResources.com (Use that site’s “Contacts” page to submit your message and to ask the staffer to bring it to the attention of the company owner, Mrs. Bonnie Arnwine.)