At St Peter and St Paul, our progression towards accurate, well formed handwriting starts at the very beginning of the children's school journey.  We place great emphasis on the development of both gross and fine motor skills, alongside supporting the children to develop their letter formation and handwriting style. We follow Letter-Join handwriting programme to ensure that pupils receive structured, systematic teaching leading to neat, legible handwriting. ​​​​​​​

Reception

In Reception, the pupils have continuous and ever changing activities, both inside and outside the classroom, that develop their motor skills. The children enjoy manipulating different materials and loose parts, mark making and writing in different materials such as rice and sand, crafting and constructing. Additionally, they have discrete handwriting sessions, following our handwriting programme, to teach correct letter formation of all lowercase letters. 

The pupils also have daily dough disco sessions, in which they enjoy dancing along to the music whilst their finger muscles work hard to manipulate the dough in lots of different ways. 

Key Stage One

In Key Stage One, handwriting continues to be taught in discrete sessions each day and is then further modelled by teachers across all curriculum teaching. Handwriting is taught in letter families in order to help the children recognise the patterns in the way letters are formed. Pupils are also taught to form letters proportionally, recognising ascenders and descenders, as well as the proportional size of uppercase letters and numbers. 

Key Stage Two 

Pupils in Key Stage Two continue to follow our Letter Join handwriting programme and receive 3 discrete handwriting sessions per week. Pupils are supported to develop their cursive handwriting.