Corpus Christi

At Corpus Christi, we follow the PenPals scheme for handwriting. Over the past few months we have really focused on our handwriting and ensuring it is the best it can be. This whole school initiative has been a huge success as the progress made in handwriting has been fantastic! Well done everyone, keep it up!

We begin teaching the correct letter formation in Reception and begin to practice writing on a baseline as well as ensuring our ascenders, descenders and short letters are clear.

In Year 1, the children continue to embed the ‘ S factors for success’ that were introduced in Reception. In Year 1, they are: Shape, Space, Size and Sitting (on the baseline).

As the children move into Year 2, they continue to develop their consistency with the S factors learnt in Year 1. They really focus on exit flicks on their letters so that they can begin to learn horizonal and diagonal joins. It may take several months before the joins become apparent in their free writing.

As the children move through Year 3 and 4, they are introduced to more horizontal and diagonal joins and practice these frequently in their handwriting lessons. They begin to experiment with the latter stages of the S factors – Stringing letters together (joining with fluency), slant and speed. In Year 4 children will begin to write in pen.

By the time the children reach Year 5 and Year 6, all children should be joining their handwriting fluently.