How we teach handwriting

At Queen’s Drive Primary School, we use the Cambridge Penpals handwriting scheme throughout the school. This is a whole school programme from Reception Class to Year 6. It uses the Sassoon font which is partly cursive, using the exit flick from letters. Penpals uses warm up exercises to develop gross and fine motor skills. These prepare children for writing and promote good posture. It is a kinaesthetic approach to handwriting with lots of opportunities for sky writing and tracing over letter patterns which helps children to develop their pencil control and ultimately their pencil flow.

Within Penpals there are five key developmental stages as outlined below.

These stages allow children to sustain efficient handwriting over long periods

of time and legible handwriting under speed.

1.) Mark making, creativity and basic letter formation in the Early Years.

2.) Joining is introduced in the middle of Year 1.

3.) Joining is secured by the end of Year 2.

4.) Speed and fluency are concentrated on in Years 3 and 4.

5.) Year 5 and 6 concentrate on project based sessions. Speed and fluency are still practised but there is a further emphasis on presentation skills and developing a personal style.