Handwriting Advice Needed

[Guest]

Whilst planning today with a colleague - we were getting ourselves tied up in knots over handwriting - we've planned in various activities for our children who are not ready to write but are not sure what is the best way forward for the more able - should we be teaching the letter formation to go with the sound introduced from ' playing with sounds / jolly phonics which we do each day - we will be going over the way to write this letter - or would we be better teaching letters as a group that have the same stroke movement such as all the long ladder letters - but then we may be covering letters that children don't know the sound too! We were also looking at name writing and our more able can write their name but often with incorrect formation - so do we just spend some time one to one trying to correct this now before we teach the letter formation ! oh dear it's confusing me just thinking about it Hope someone has some advice and can understand the above message !!

[Susan]

Oh, how many times have I pondered that one!!?

 

Can you concentrate on patterns for writing rather than handwriting ie letter formation?

I would look at trying to get their names right and the letter fromation as you introduce it in your phonics. When the children have all the phonemes you can teach the formation in families.

 

Also all the children can join in the patterns too.

[Guest]

Agree with Susan really. We started doing handwriting linked with our Jolly Phonics, the handwriting improved but there was the added bonus of the children actually making the link between the phoneme and grapheme, something children in previous years had struggled with. Name writing is a must too and can be approached in so many different ways.

Liz x