In an era of computers and tablets, the skill has fallen out of fashion.

But a new state law requires students to learn the old-school style of handwriting... by the time they leave the sixth grade.

(Sophie Guardia, Grade 4 student)

"I love it.... it's just fancy, how to write, and it's like, fun to learn new letters."

At Orangethorpe Elementary School in Fullerton, California... students are practicing the flowy penmanship.

Sixth grader Milo Chang says he thinks cursive is stretching his abilities.

"I really think it helps like my handwriting too, just like print, because if you're writing something, if you're doing something harder, basically if you're doing an easier version of that, you'll probably get better at the easier version too."

The new law was sponsored by California assembly member Sharon Quirk-Silva, a former elementary school teacher who said she was inspired to introduce the bill after a chance encounter with former Governor Jerry Brown in 2016.

"Jerry Brown was the governor and invited a group of us to dinner. I happened to sit right next to him and he said, 'What do you do?' and I said 'I'm a teacher for elementary,' and he said right away, 'you need to bring back cursive writing.'"

The bill-turned-law requires handwriting instruction for grades one through six... including cursive in the "appropriate" grade levels - generally considered to be third grade and above.

California's Common Core standards did technically still have cursive writing goals, but Quirk-Silva said instruction was patchy.

"The hope of the legislation is that by the time students leave sixth grade, they would be able to read and write it."

Orangethorpe Elementary School teacher Pamela Keller says some of her students still need convincing.

"A lot of my students will say, 'Oh, it's too hard to write in cursive.' And so we tell them, 'Well, it's going to make you smarter. It's going to make some connections in your brain, and it's going to help you move to the next level. And then they get excited because students want to be 'smarter', they want to learn, they want to be the top dog in the class and I think that's really exciting for them."

Experts say learning cursive boosts cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills.

LESLIE ZOROYA: "You're using different neural networks when you're doing cursive..."

Leslie Zoroya is a project director for reading language arts at the Los Angeles county education office.

She says learning cursive provides childhood development benefits.

"As you're creating the letter, you're thinking about what is the sound that that letter makes and how does it connect to the next letter, and what are those two sound together."

Educators also say cursive can unlock a doorway to the past...

Giving students the ability to examine generations-old family letters or important historic documents.

KELLER: "We have, I told you, the Constitution in our library, it's written, handwritten in cursive. So if you can't read those pieces of history without somebody translating it for you, I find that to be kind of sad too. So I just want my students to have that choice to be able to open up that world for them."