Capital Letters

Stage 2 to #Handwriting Success – Single Letter Formation

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Last week we explained that pre-handwriting patterns are the first stage of learning to handwrite. Once a child has mastered theses, they are ready to start learning how to form letters.

But where do you start?

Our view is to focus on lower-case letters first and only the capital letters for the first letter in a child’s, examples: Peter Rabbit, Sally Green, George Blue or Mary Shell.

Why?

  • One reason is that about 95% of what children write, and are exposed to, is in a lower-case form and only 5% in capital.
  • Lower-case letters are far less complicated, requiring fewer pencil lifts to complete the letters.
  • As both lower-case and capital letters require a child to form curved lines, a skill which most children have to practise, writing lower-case letters is no more difficult than writing capitals.
  • In a young child’s writing all the letters are initially the same size, whether they are capitals or lower case; it is part of the normal developmental path of handwriting. So, the view that teaching capitals letters is easier because they are bigger is not true.
  • Young children who have learnt mostly capital letters first find it difficult to stop, as it is so ingrained into the memory, often using them half way through words and sentences. Even when they are older this inappropriate use of capitals creeps back into their work especially if they are tired or concentrating hard on composing their work.

Have you got your Free Letter Formation Animations & Worksheets?      

For Teachers: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/key-stage-1-handwriting-routes.html

For Parents: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/parents.html

A child’s first major achievement, in their eyes, is to write their name. So, although concentrating on lower-case letters, teach them how to form the capital letter for the first letters of their name to get them excited about handwriting.

As they master the lower-case letters introduce the remainder of the capital letters. It is important that both are taught so that a child can develop a speedy, fluid and legible handwriting style.

Stage 2 to #Handwriting Success – Single Letter Formation

lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Last week we explained that pre-handwriting patterns are the first stage of learning to handwrite. Once a child has mastered theses, they are ready to start learning how to form letters.

But where do you start?

Our view is to focus on lower-case letters first and only the capital letters for the first letter in a child’s, examples: Peter Rabbit, Sally Green, George Blue or Mary Shell.

Why?

  • One reason is that about 95% of what children write, and are exposed to, is in a lower-case form and only 5% in capital.
  • Lower-case letters are far less complicated, requiring fewer pencil lifts to complete the letters.
  • As both lower-case and capital letters require a child to form curved lines, a skill which most children have to practise, writing lower-case letters is no more difficult than writing capitals.
  • In a young child’s writing all the letters are initially the same size, whether they are capitals or lower case; it is part of the normal developmental path of handwriting. So, the view that teaching capitals letters is easier because they are bigger is not true.
  • Young children who have learnt mostly capital letters first find it difficult to stop, as it is so ingrained into the memory, often using them half way through words and sentences. Even when they are older this inappropriate use of capitals creeps back into their work especially if they are tired or concentrating hard on composing their work.

Have you got your Free Letter Animations and Worksheets?

For Teachers: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/key-stage-1-handwriting-routes.html

For Parents: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/parents.html

A child’s first major achievement, in their eyes, is to write their name. So, although concentrating on lower-case letters, teach them how to form the capital letter for the first letters of their name to get them excited about handwriting.

As they master the lower-case letters introduce the remainder of the capital letters. It is important that both are taught so that a child can develop a speedy, fluid and legible handwriting style.

The Second Stage to #Handwriting Success – Single Letter Formation

lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment
https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/letter-animations-worksheets.html

Last week we explained that pre-handwriting patterns are the first stage of learning to handwrite. Once a child has mastered theses, they are ready to start learning how to form letters.

But where do you start?

Our view is to focus on lower-case letters first and only the capital letters for the first letter in a child’s, examples: Peter Rabbit, Sally Green, George Blue or Mary Shell.

Why?

  • One reason is that about 95% of what children write, and are exposed to, is in a lower-case form and only 5% in capital.
  • Lower-case letters are far less complicated, requiring fewer pencil lifts to complete the letters.
  • As both lower-case and capital letters require a child to form curved lines, a skill which most children have to practise, writing lower-case letters is no more difficult than writing capitals.
  • In a young child’s writing all the letters are initially the same size, whether they are capitals or lower case; it is part of the normal developmental path of handwriting. So, the view that teaching capitals letters is easier because they are bigger is not true.
  • Young children who have learnt mostly capital letters first find it difficult to stop, as it is so ingrained into the memory, often using them half way through words and sentences. Even when they are older this inappropriate use of capitals creeps back into their work especially if they are tired or concentrating hard on composing their work.

A child’s first major achievement, in their eyes, is to write their name. So, although concentrating on lower-case letters, teach them how to form the capital letter for the first letters of their name to get them excited about handwriting.

As they master the lower-case letters introduce the remainder of the capital letters. It is important that both are taught so that a child can develop a speedy, fluid and legible handwriting style.

Free Letter Formation Animations & Worksheets: http://bit.ly/2F9P7cI

The Third Stage to Handwriting Success – Joining

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Joins A & W 2

Here at Teach Handwriting we believe that a child is only ready to start learning to join their handwriting when:

  • They have learnt to form all 26 lower case letters correctly
  • Letters are of a consistent and suitable size (not necessarily the perfect size, remember big is beautiful)
  • Letters are positioned appropriately on the writing line as well as in relation to one another.

Children generally begin to join letters between the ages of 6 to 7 years old, depending on the handwriting font style being taught. Those taught a continuous cursive font style from the beginning tend to join much earlier due to the nature of this font (for some by the end of their Reception Year).

Children do not need to be able to remember how to correctly form all their capital letters before they are taught how to join their letters. This is because capital letters never join to the lower case letters in a word. However, for these children correct capital letter formation needs to be taught alongside the introduction of letter joins.

We would recommend teaching joins in join type groups, whether your child has learnt cursive or continuous cursive single letter fonts.

Teaching the join types in their groups helps a child to understand the directional pushes and pulls required to successfully join the different letter combinations.

We would recommend teaching the bottom joins first, then the top exit to ‘e’ join and finally the top exit letter joins.

For our free join animations and worksheets: http://bit.ly/2F9P7cI

For tips to support the teaching of joins check out our Teaching Tips section:  http://bit.ly/2AaX8sk

The Second Stage to Handwriting Success – Single Letter Formation

lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Letter Formation 2

Last week we explained that pre-handwriting patterns are the first stage of learning to handwrite. Once a child has mastered theses, they are ready to start learning how to form letters.

But where do you start?

Our view is to focus on lower-case letters first and only the capital letters for the first letter in a child’s, examples: Peter Rabbit, Sally Green, George Blue or Mary Shell.

Why?

  • One reason is that about 95% of what children write, and are exposed to, is in a lower-case form and only 5% in capital.
  • Lower-case letters are far less complicated, requiring fewer pencil lifts to complete the letters.
  • As both lower-case and capital letters require a child to form curved lines, a skill which most children have to practise, writing lower-case letters is no more difficult than writing capitals.
  • In a young child’s writing all the letters are initially the same size, whether they are capitals or lower case; it is part of the normal developmental path of handwriting. So, the view that teaching capitals letters is easier because they are bigger is not true.
  • Young children who have learnt mostly capital letters first find it difficult to stop, as it is so ingrained into the memory, often using them half way through words and sentences. Even when they are older this inappropriate use of capitals creeps back into their work especially if they are tired or concentrating hard on composing their work.

A child’s first major achievement, in their eyes, is to write their name. So, although concentrating on lower-case letters, teach them how to form the capital letter for the first letters of their name to get them excited about handwriting.

As they master the lower-case letters introduce the remainder of the capital letters. It is important that both are taught so that a child can develop a speedy, fluid and legible handwriting style.

Free Letter Formation Animations & Worksheets: http://bit.ly/2F9P7cI

Handwriting Teaching Routes and Letter fonts

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Handwriting animation page

The website design has been up for two weeks now and we hope that you are finding your way around OK.

Over the next few weeks we will be guiding you through some of the new changes. All the animations, worksheets, games, activities and support information that was on the old website design is still in the new one with some new elements and most importantly is still FREE for all to use on a non-commercial basis.

Teaching Routes

To support schools and the parents of children whose school use the website to teach their children, we have organised the animations and worksheets into our 4 main Teaching Routes. These are based on the most common teaching routes (approaches) used in schools to teach handwriting.

We refer to these as Teaching Routes A, B, C and D. The teaching route used by a school will depend on which letter font they will introduce in Foundation Stage (4 – 5 year olds) and then teach in Key Stage 1 (5 – 7 year olds).

More information on the Teaching Routes for handwriting can be found in our Handwriting Letters Fonts section: http://bit.ly/2RFlHEN

Letter Fonts

There are four main font styles taught in UK schools; manuscript capital letters, manuscript print (sometimes referred to as the ball and stick method), cursive and continuous cursive.

The capital letter and print letters in the UK have a standard letter shape and formation for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. However, this is not the case for cursive and continuous cursive letter fonts.

For the Teach Handwriting Website and The Teaching Handwriting Scheme for schools (if purchased) we have standardized 23 of the letters in the cursive and continuous cursive fonts and offer different versions for the letters w, x and z.

The letter version chosen dictates which letter family (teaching groups) they belong in. This is why we have the Letter Versions 1, 2, 3 and 4. In each letter version all the letters and worksheets are in the appropriate letter families.

More information on the Letter Versions for handwriting can be found in our Handwriting Letters Fonts section: http://bit.ly/2RFlHEN

Get your free animations and worksheets for all our fonts letters and numbers by clicking through to the Handwriting animations and worksheets page on our website: http://bit.ly/2F9P7cI

Which to Teach First: Capital or Lower-Case Letters?

lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Once a child has mastered pre-handwriting patterns they are ready to start learning how to form letters, numbers and symbols.

But where do you start?

Our personal view would be to focus on lower-case letters.

Why?

  • One reason is that about 95% of what children write, and are exposed to, is in a lower-case form and only 5% in capital.
  • Lower-case letters are far less complicated, requiring fewer pencil lifts to complete the letters.
  • As both lower-case and capital letters require a child to form curved lines, a skill which most children have to practise, writing lower-case letters is no more difficult than writing capitals.
  • In a young child’s writing all the letters are initially the same size, whether they are capitals or lower case; it is part of the normal developmental path of handwriting. So the view that teaching capitals letters is easier because they are bigger is not true.
  • Young children who have learnt mostly capital letters first find it difficult to stop, as it is so ingrained into the memory, often using them half way through words and sentences. Even when they are older this inappropriate use of capitals creeps back into their work especially if they are tired or concentrating hard on composing their work.

A child’s first major achievement, in their eyes, is to write their name. So, although concentrating on lower-case letters, teach them how to form the capital letter of their name to get them excited about handwriting.

As they master the lower-case letters introduce the remainder of the capital letters. It is important that both are taught so that a child can develop a speedy, fluid and legible handwriting style.

Free Letter Formation Animations & Worksheets: http://bit.ly/1dqBYFm

When to Introduce Joined Handwriting

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Cursive igh join tall  CC sat join tall

Here at Teach Handwriting we believe that a child is only ready to start learning to join their handwriting when:

  • They have learnt to form all 26 lower case letters correctly
  • Letters are of a consistent and suitable size (not necessarily the perfect size, remember big is beautiful)
  • Letters are positioned appropriately on the writing line as well as in relation to one another.

Children generally begin to join letters between the ages of 6 to 7 years old, depending on the handwriting font style being taught. Those taught a continuous cursive font style from the beginning tend to join much earlier due to the nature of this font (for some by the end of their Reception Year).

Children do not need to be able to remember how to correctly form all their capital letters before they are taught how to join their letters. This is because capital letters never join to the lower case letters in a word. However, for these children correct capital letter formation needs to be taught alongside the introduction of letter joins.

The ultimate aim is for a child to develop a good handwriting style; which means;

  • They can produce and maintain a good speed
  • Have a fluid hand movement that is comfortable
  • Letters are of a consistent and appropriate size, positioned correctly
  • Handwriting is legible (so others can read it easily).

For some children (mainly SEND pupils) this may mean that they will always print or use a single letter form of writing as learning to join is just not appropriate. But that does not mean they will not comply with the bullet points above.

Which to Teach First: Capital or Lower Case Letters?

lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Phonics Assessment Pages

Dated 28/09/17

Once your child has mastered pre-handwriting patterns they are ready to start learning how to form letters, numbers and symbols.

But where do you start?

Our personal view would be to focus on Lower Case letters.

Why?

  • One reason being that about 95% of what children write, and are exposed to, is in a Lower Case form and only 5% in Capital.
  • Lower Case letters are far less complicated, requiring fewer pencil lifts to complete the letters.
  • As both Lower Case and Capital letters require a child to form curved lines, a skill which most children have to practise, writing lower case letters is no more difficult than writing capitals.
  • In a young child’s writing all the letters are initially the same size, whether they are Capitals or Lower Case; it is part of the normal developmental path of handwriting. So the view that teaching Capitals letters is easier because they are bigger is not true.
  • Young children who have learnt mostly Capital letters first find it difficult to stop, as it is so ingrained into the memory, often using them half way through words and sentences. Even when they are older this inappropriate use of Capitals creeps back into their work especially if they are tired or concentrating hard on composing their work.

Your child’s first major achievement, in their eyes, is to write their name. So, although concentrating on Lower Case letters, teach them how to form the Capital letter of their name to get them excited about handwriting.

As they master the Lower Case letters introduce the remainder of the Capital letters. It is important that both are taught so that your child can develop a speedy, fluid and legible handwriting style.

Free Letter Formation Animations & Worksheets: http://bit.ly/1dqBYFm