How do teachers manage left-handed children in reception?

[NumptyNu]

I wonder about this due to my child being a left-hander and seemingly struggling with her writing, despite working at expected levels elsewhere.

One of the problems that I noticed during a recent parent participation session (and I mentioned this to the teacher, as she hadn't noticed), was the difficulties for the left-hander in using the handheld white board + felt pens to practice writing in class. As soon as DD moves across the board while writing a word, her sleeve then smudges her work as she moves across. She then attempts to correct this, while the class move on to the next thing, and so she easily loses track of what is going on. The teacher hadn't noticed that this was happening, despite the small group number.

Do left-handers get any help to overcome such difficulties in your experience?

DD's school held a special "group" for left handers in Reception. They had weekly sessions for (IIRC) a term.
The session was run by a left-handed teacher and she went through such things as posture, pencil grip, how to hold your paper and different (from right handers) letter formations.

I thought the group was excellent - only trouble was that I'm not sure other teachers in the school were aware of the info the children were given and it did felt like when the group finsihed DD was left to muddle along on her own.

You can (I think) get round the smudging what you;ve written by holding the whiteboard at an angle - but it's pretty poor that the teacher hadn't noticed she was struggline.

Why don't you do some work with her at home to overcome this?
I'm a left hander and I hold the page perpendicular so I'm effectively writing down the page. If you don't have a whiteboard then try it with chalk, being left handed needn't be a hindrance and does not require specialist resources in my experience.

Nothing seemed to/ seems to happen to help my left handed boy at school apart from a general lack of acknowledgement of his left handedness. He does struggle with the physical act of writing. He is now year 3 and it holds him back a bit I feel.

DD is left handed and just finishing reception.

At the beginning of the school year she struggled with the physical aspect of writing although how much of that is due to being left handed or hypermobile I don't know.

She has a bit of an odd pencil grip but her writing is good now.

She uses LH scissors in the classroom.

My DS is in Reception and is a left hander too. When he first got his writing board to practise on I too noticed that he would smudge the writing. I mentioned it to the teacher who like your DD's hadn't noticed this either and the end solution was that DS gets to write on paper now and doesn't really use the writing board at all. Since this there has been a definite improvement in his writing.

Brilliant. Excellent info, suggestions and support as usual! Thanks so much.

Forgot to say I don't think DD uses a little white board either. Never really thought about it, maybe this is why

Thanks Simpson!