Cursive Handwriting
When children join us in Reception, we begin to teach them to form their letters in a cursive style. Since adopting this approach, we have seen significant improvements in children’s handwriting across the school.
Your child will learn to form every letter with an entry and exit stroke.
Children are taught that every letter starts on the line.
The sheets below are provided to enable you to support your child at home. Tracing over the letters using their fingers, coloured pencils or felt-tip pens will help them to consolidate their ability to form them correctly or you could enlarge the letters and encourage them to practice writing large scale letters using paints. If your child is initially reluctant to pick up a pen or a pencil why not get creative. They could practice writing on a steamed up window, trace over the letters using a toy car or get outdoors and use chalks, water, and a paintbrush, or get muddy using a stick in the mud!
Constant repetition will pay dividends, emphasising the correct entry and exit strokes every time. It is essential that your child gets into good habits early on and this includes having the correct pencil grip.
Although this cursive style may seem alien to some of you as adults and can seem quite laborious to start as it takes slightly longer to write each letter separately, you will really see the benefits when your child starts to join fully towards the end of Year 1 and in Year 2.