What year in school do they teach correct formation of writing the alphabet?

[Choclatespread]

My DS Y1 can form all the letters, however he can not form all of them correctly. The teacher has asked me to practice this with him. He is getting frustrated as when I'm telling him its different he will disagree and dislikes handwriting practice. What strategies could I use?

they teach it in reception

Ask the school for a template of the letter formation, some schools teach cursive from reception and others learn to print the letters first.

Children should be taught correct letter formation right from day 1. Once they have learnt incorrectly they find it difficult to retrain themselves as you have found! To make it more fun you could practice correct formation at home by writing in wet sand/mud, shaving foam, chalkboard, whiteboard, on the shower screen etc. Any way you can think of that is fun and NOT paper and pencil. There also a few apps you could try ABC Tracer & Letter School; I'm sure there are more too. YOu could also teach a little rhyme for the child to say as they are writing to reinforce the shape and orientation. For example 'b' = first the bat and then the ball, 'h' down the road and over the hill etc

Thank you for the replies, I'm not having much luck with the support and help for my child, and I've been busy trying to sort out some health issues, anyway that's a different story.

In reception we never got any handwriting practice. I like the rhyming idea, but how will I know what to use for the other letters?

I think it is RWI that uses rhymes for letter formation (read, write inc) you should find it online somewhere....

Ds is 6 1/2 in P2 and he writes lots of letters wrong, when i asked his teacher i was told its not a problem as long as he gets a letter down on paper and he will get it eventually he writes a b doing the rounded bit first and e starting at the bottom a g is a circle then a tail which just looks wrong etc. His numbers are as bad he does a 9 from the bottom up and still cant do an 8 at all clearly

I can't really see how he would get it eventually if he is not shown. At the moment he is just practising it wrong which probably feels right to him.

Is the show about the still around?

I agree cecilyp, we live in a completely different area to where me and dh grew up, we went to a city school and we are now rural. Dh says he notices at work that most people here form their letters like that so school here obviously dont bother, i hate it though actually the more i think about what ds is learning the unhappier im becoming.

Try Hairy letters - it's a ipad/iphone app that has them trace the letters with a finger, and has little cartoons that reinforce the phonic sounds too.

Thanks for the replies. I have finally got a chance to check the replies. It's really frustrating as the teacher said she would give me some worksheets to help him and now a week on still hasn't.

The magic pencil vid is really good. Going to show him in the morning, do they do the other letters as well, or is it only for letter g?

They do others too, the tv show was called "Words and Pictures", I remember watching it in school and at home on sick days! I hope there is more on YouTube for you.