Handwriting
At Birtley House we believe Handwriting is an important life skill and is a key method of communication. Pupils at Birtley Houe receive two teacher-led handwriting sessions a week.
We follow the National Curriculum guidance for teaching handwriting:
Key Stage 1:
- Sit correctly and hold a pencil correctly.
- Form lower-case and capital letters with the correct relative size to one another with appropriate spacing.
- Write digits 0-9.
- Understand which letters belong to handwriting ‘families’ and practise them.
Key Stage 2:
- Write legibly and fluently with increasing speed.
- Begin to use joined handwriting consistently.
We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Handwriting programme to match our phonics scheme. Pupils follow through the scheme which has been carefully planned to teach the letters in a sequence that maximises learning and memory. The letter formation phrases and examples can be found in the Little Wandle Handwriting documents below.
Capital letter formation phrases
Lowercase letter formation phrases
Once pupils have completed all units in the Little Wandle Handwriting scheme and mastered their handwriting, our next step is to encourage cursive handwriting. We use the Twinkl Cursive programme to teach cursive as the next step of handwriting. These lessons are also sequenced in a research-informed way to allow for maximum progression.
We understand many pupils have difficulties with fine motor skills and this can be a barrier to their learning often. We have a range of resources to adapt and differentiate our handwriting sessions to allow all pupils to access the handwriting programme:
- Pencil Grips
- Range of pencil with different grips/thickness’
- Slanted boards
- Various chairs/wobble stools
- Foot rests
- Various desks at different heights
- Sensory materials to practise handwriting in
- Targeted fine motor interventions
- Support from the school Occupational Therapist
To support further at home, Little Wandle provide extra handwriting practice sheets to allow parents to support with the learning further.
