breaking handwriting down

Training up writers that can write not only fluently, but with fluid hand motions is something I gave thought to this year. Last school year was the first time I worked with the Common Core Standards and a mid-year expectation is that kinders will master:

• K.L.1.a-3. Print all uppercase letters.
• K.L.1.a-4. Print all lowercase letters.

At first, I'll admit, I was frustrated by having to put this into place. I've always focused on handwriting and forming letters (I had a principal that felt handwriting was very important). However, I took my time teaching letter formation. This year, I see the benefits of increasing the intensity with which we practiced, but also increasing the frequency of smart practice.

By increasing the intensity and amount of practice in smart ways, I do see less hesitation in general from my writers and I do less re-teaching in this area overall. Why? Because they haven't had time to develop incorrect habits.


We started teaching a letter a day to our students and part of my main focus was how to form the letter. We skywrite with our fingers, noses, toes... anything to keep us moving those first days of school! We always followed up the morning after by practicing the letter with our "rainbow books" that my favorite teacher down the hall made for us. (And boy do some learn their color words from this!)

Teaching a sing-songy way to form it while describing the strokes really helped set the stage.


We do have a handwriting curriculum book that does get used (ah hem), but it lacks showing the connection between the strokes I knew my students picked up from our sing-songy practice and the letters that actually use those strokes.

So I made three simple sheets to practice in small groups. The top portion practices the simple stroke and the bottom is the letters that I think help practice the stroke the best. At the bottom, my kinders had to change crayon colors when writing each letter. This was almost mean, but it works. They have to almost hit the "reset" button in their brains to think, "What kind of stroke was I making?" when putting their new crayon to the paper. If they simply use the same color, they begin to go on autopilot and focus less on what their hand is actually doing.

We didn't just practice on these sheets that went home. We practiced in our small groups on whiteboards, in paint bags, with playdough and I assessed along the way...

What didn't work...

My desire to have students practice just the letters they needed to form correctly was very tricky to keep track of and communicate progress to each student on an on-going basis. I could keep track in my binder, but how could I let the kinders get excited over their own growth, even if it was just one new letter they figured out? And how can I show them which letters they should be practicing individually over and over right now?

I made an alphabet chart for each student and we marked off each letter they mastered. This was way too tricky to keep up with. The format was just too cumbersome and flipping to a different student's page to mark off their letters while others needed to see their page so they could see what to work on just didn't work logistically.

What did work...

Note cards. I actually made these to focus the practice my kinders were doing on producing their letter sounds. Only the letters sounds they needed were written on their own personal card. They had to cover up each letter written on their card with a bingo chip three times at the beginning of a group lesson before completing the whole alphabet chart with sounds. When a student could produce each sound without the chart, we marked it off and celebrated!

So, I flipped over their card and drew a pencil icon at the top to signify these were for handwriting to my emerging readers. I wrote their letters to still master underneath, grouped by upper and lowercase. As pictured above, you can see that this student had quite a few to practice right after our first quarter assessments based on the number of letters written on the card. You can also see that we can easily cross things off as they are mastered, giving a sense of accomplishment!

Same routine... they get their individual card (which are easily stored by groups) and practice writing each letter three times. I did incentivize them for their hard work the first few times (a smelly spot works wonders), but now they want the privilege to do the whole chart and strut their stuff after practicing their focus letters! This also gives me the luxury of being able to give each kinder my attention since they all finish at different times, yet have an additional thing to do. These sheets were created this year after I made my starting dot handwriting font and they are laminated with uppercase on one side, lowercase on the other.

While all of that is in small group, remember I said that we started out our year teaching a letter a day? We moved to focusing on vowels and then began hitting a letter formation pattern as a focus during a whole group work time. Well, I figured if using an alphabet and sight word chart work... why not a handwriting chart?

{Free Handwriting Strokes Posters}

So I made a few handwriting posters (giant sized) and we used one of the four (seen on the right) as a focus for a week. Again we used skywriting with fingers, noses and toes to feel the formation of the letters and even went on a hunt around the classroom for letters with the pattern.

This helped keep the sing-songy strokes as something that connected the whole class and gave us all "one language" to speak.

We are getting very close to all traditional students being at 100% and I am seeing huge gains in both writing sight words and writing in general.

More Handwriting

> Get the handwriting font (free)
> Download beginning strokes sheets  (free)
> Download handwriting posters/workmats (free)

Related Product 

> Playdough Word Work Pack

So, with some focused practice which I felt was smarter than I've done before, I am one happy teacher to celebrate the little moments of mastery with my kinders! If you like what I do here on KindergartenWorks, then be sure to subscribe today. I look forward to sharing ideas with you weekly.
- Leslie

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