Handwriting curriculum

Handwriting Curriculum Vision

At Brooke School we believe that Handwriting is vital for engaging in and demonstrating learning and knowledge. A flexible, fluent and legible handwriting style empowers children to write with confidence and creativity. This is an entitlement that needs careful progression and skilful discrete teaching that is frequent and continues beyond the initial foundation stages.

Key Aims

We aim for our pupils to develop a neat, legible, speedy handwriting style using continuous cursive letters that leads to producing letters and words automatically in independent writing. Our aim is to help pupils enjoy learning and developing their handwriting with a sense of achievement and pride. We aim for pupils to understand the importance of neat presentation and the need for different letterforms (cursive, printed or capital letters) to help communicate meaning clearly.

At Brooke we use Penpals for Handwriting. Pen Pals for Handwriting is a complete handwriting scheme that offers clear progression through five developmental stages: physical preparation for handwriting; securing correct letter formation; beginning to join along, securing the joins and practicing speed, fluency and developing a personal style. Penpals is focused on whole-class teaching using digital resources to enable modelling and interactive learning, along with Practice Books and Workbooks to support independent work. The Foundation content is in line with the EYFS Framework and the Year 1–6 content supports frequent, discrete and direct teaching of handwriting, as required by National Curriculum.

Handwriting is a taught skill that develops at different rates for different children. All of the teachers in the school put a priority on teaching handwriting and have high expectations for handwriting across the curriculum. Our school uses Penpals for Handwriting to ensure that:

• The importance of handwriting is recognised and given appropriate time.
• The progression of handwriting is consistent across the school.
• Handwriting is acknowledged to be a whole-body activity and emphasis is placed on correct posture and pencil grip for handwriting.
• Expectations of left-handed children are equal to those of right-handed children, and appropriate advice and resources are available to ensure that they learn to write with a comfortable, straight wrist.
• Handwriting is linked into grammar, punctuation and spelling in order to practice and contextualise all of the transcriptional and stylistic skills for writing.
• Children learn to self-assess their own writing and develop understanding and responsibility for improving it.
• Children learn to write in different styles for different purposes such as print for labelling a diagram, illustrated capitals letters for creating a poster, swift jottings for writing notes, making a ‘best copy’ for presentation and fast, fluent and legible writing across the curriculum.

Handwriting progression

Handwriting is a developmental process with its own distinctive stages of sequential growth. We have identified five stages that form the basic organisational structure of Penpals:

1. Physical preparation for handwriting: gross and fine motor skills leading to mark-making, patterns and letter formation
2. Correct letter formation
3. Beginning to join along with a focus on relative size and spacing
4. Securing the joins along with a focus on break letters, legibility, consistency and quality
5. Practising speed, fluency and developing a personalised style for different purposes