Cedarwood Primary School

Practice Makes Perfect!

The best way for children to get better at writing is to practise. For those children who find writing harder, this can feel effortful which may be off-putting. Therefore, finding creative ways of weaving writing into everyday activities can be a fun way of helping your child engage with and develop this essential life skill.

Early Writing

Children need to develop strong muscles in their hands, arms and upper body in order to be able to hold a pencil with the strength, grip and control necessary for writing.

Therefore, lots of pre-writing activities which involve the development of children's fine motor skills. Below are some activities designed for this purpose that you may wish to try with your child at home. 

Accurate letter formation is an essential skill that all children need to develop to enable them to write fluently and neatly as they move through school. Getting this right from the beginning of their writing journey will make learning to write much easier.

It is really important when children begin to form letters that they are taught to write lower case letters first, rather than upper case or capital letters. This is because at school they will write in lower case unless they need to use capitalisation for a purpose, and it can be difficult for children to change habits if they have already begun writing in a particular way.

Continuous Cursive Handwriting

At Cedarwood, we teach pupils to write in a continuous cursive handwriting style. This begins in Year 1, when pupils learn to use the 'zoom ins' and 'flicks out' on their letters, which will letter become joined in Year 2.

Research has shown that the use of a continuous cursive handwriting style plays a significant role, not only in developing fine motor skills but also in learning spelling patterns. This is particularly important for children who struggle with spelling and find decoding writing patterns challenging. Once this skill has developed, the child should be able to recall spelling patterns with automaticity. The child can then focus on the content and structure of writing rather than the disconnected process of letter recollection. The brain thinks more rapidly and fluently in whole words than in single letters where the pen is lifted off the page much more frequently. Cursive handwriting therefore encourages fluidity of thought processes when writing and is also much quicker. This will be useful for any student in exams where time is limited. Cursive handwriting also develops hand/eye co-ordination and motor skills which can help develop skills in other areas of life and work.

Below are some tips for supporting early writing development and a guide which shows how to write continuous cursive letters.

Writing Confidence

For some children, particularly those with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, writing confidence can easily be knocked. This is because writing involves a wide range of skills and it is very hard to remember to include every element, every time you write. Authors edit and re-work their texts many times because even experts find it hard to flow creatively, choose ambitious vocabulary, ensure accurate grammar and punctuation, at the same time as spelling all words correctly and making their handwriting neat!

So, when your child produces writing at home, celebrate the overall quality and creativity of the piece rather than highlighting errors. Writing accuracy will develop with practice and if there is a school focus on a particular aspect of writing, this will be clear from your child’s homework or class newsletter.

'Free-writing' is a term we use in school to describe the time pupils are given to write freely as part of their writing journey. In school, pupils love having the freedom to write about topics of their own choosing and experiment with different types of writing. This could be a great way of encouraging your child to engage in writing at home. 

Remember, less is often more! Short, accurate pieces of writing are just as valid as pages of words. 

If you or your child would like any further advice or support with Writing, Mrs Rachel Esling, our Writing lead will be delighted to help.