Handwriting

At Cherry Garden Primary, we follow the Little Wandle handwriting scheme. letters are taught in 'letter families', which are groups of lowercase letters that share similar formation patterns, starting points, and movements.

In Year 1, handwriting builds on the foundations laid in EYFS while continuing to focus on:

• consolidation of letter formation
• sizing and spacing of letters
• formation of punctuation marks and digits 0–9
• practice linked to phonics

In Year 2, handwriting builds upon the skills introduced in Year 1, moving on to focus on:

• sizing of letters
• spacing of letters
•  joining letters using the two main joins
• practice linked to spelling patterns.

From Year 3 onwards, children are taught to use a cursive script. A cursive script is a continuous script where every letter starts on the line. The alphabet below demonstrates this:

Every child's writing develops at a slightly different pace (as with most learning). As with any skill, handwriting develops more rapidly with regular practice. Below are a selection of resources which you can download and use to develop your child's handwriting at home. Please speak with your child's class teacher if you have any questions about the resources, how to use them effectively or to discuss your child's handwriting.

Resources to Support Letter Formation

The following resources should be used to support children in learning to write individual letters in our cursive font (Year 1 onwards).

 

Resources to Support Joining

Once your child is forming each letter in our cursive font fluently, joining should start to follow quite naturally. Children may begin by joining pairs of letters or strings of several letters but will soon progress to joining all letters in a word.

The resources below are designed to provide children with practice of joining increasingly longer words.