At Whittington School, Worcester an emphasis is placed on embedding foundation skills for writing, pencil grip, sitting position, letter formation, legibility and printing at speed rather than rushing children to use cursive handwriting from the start. Every child is taught the correct direction and orientation of each letter in their correct letter families as per the current National Curriculum – until Year 3. They do not teach a pre cursive with an entry/lead-in stroke.
Through using this method to teach handwriting, the school have seen fantastic results, with all Year 2 pupils making significant progress and they have seen every child reaching their standardised expectation for their age level.
Joined-up (cursive) handwriting without an entry/lead-in stroke is introduced towards the end of Year 2 and into Year 3 with significant results.
By Year 4, joined-up handwriting is an automatic process and one that is embedded for life.
We are delighted to work with Whittington School and have witnessed first-hand how passionate they are about teaching handwriting correctly and the results really do speak for themselves.