Handwriting
Children at Christ Church & Holy Trinity Schools are taught to write in a cursive script from Reception Class.
Research has shown that the use of a continuous cursive handwriting style plays a significant role, not only in developing fine motor skills but also in learning spelling patterns. This is particularly important for children who struggle with spelling and find decoding writing patterns challenging.
A huge emphasis is placed on developing fine motor skills in EYFS and a wide range of activities are available both inside and outside the classroom.
Children in EYFS regularly take part in ‘dough disco’. Dough disco involves moulding play dough in time to music and performing different actions such as rolling it into a ball, flattening it, putting each individual finger into the dough, rolling it into a sausage and squeezing it.
From Year 1 to Year 6 children have regular discreet handwriting lessons where spelling is used as a focus for rehearsing the joins.
The letters are split into families depending upon the way they are formed.
We have:
The straight letters i l t u
The 2 o’clock letters c a d g q s
The tunnel letters n m h b p
The top joiners o r v w
The square letters x z
The odd letters f k f y e
Children’s handwriting is monitored regularly by the class teacher and they are sent to the English co-ordinator if they meet all of the criteria to receive a pen licence.
The children must meet this criteria:
I always write lower case letters ½ the line space
I always write capital letters in proportion to lower case letters
I always start, finish and join all lower case and upper case letters in the correct place
I always make my ascenders touch the top line
I always make my descenders sit on the line and hang below
I always space letters and words correctly
