Whole School Handwriting Scheme

At Saint Patrick's Catholic Primary School, we have decided to adopt a whole school cursive style for handwriting and we use the Letter-join scheme to support us in the delivery of this. We believe that introducing a cursive handwriting style will raise standards in Writing throughout the whole school, developing consistency, confidence, accuracy, fluency and improved presentation.

Using this scheme, you will see the children learn to use ‘entry and exit’ strokes when forming their letters as well as ‘joins’ used to connect letters together. Below you will see our handwriting progression from Early Years to Year 6 which outlines the key skills taught within each year group. As this is a new scheme all of the children will begin by learning how to form the single letters, with each year group then moving on to teach specific skills once the children are ready. 

Our chosen cursive letter forms can be seen below:

Handwriting in Year 3

In year 3 we begin by:

• Consolidating joins taught in Year 2
• Teaching main letter joins: in, ine, ut, ute, ve, vi, ok, oh, you, oi
• Joining to and from letters:
• s: sh, as, es
• r: ri, ru, ry, er, ir, ur
• a: oa, ad, as, ai  (with ascender eg h/descenders eg y): ha, ta, fa, al, ay, ag
• e: ee, ea, ed, (practicing horizontal join to e): re, oe, fe
• o: ow, ov, os, (with ascenders eg l /descenders eg g): ot, ol, ok, og, od
• y: ky, hy, ly
• u: fu, wu, vu (practicing horizontal join to u)