Year 2 Handwriting

[DottyDetective]

Obviously the past year has been a difficult time for children but I’m getting worried about my DD’s handwriting. In reception and year 1 she had legible printed writing but it’s deteriorated hugely this year to the point that it’s illegible. Her teacher insists she uses “lead ins” and says DD is just being lazy she can get there with practice. I would much prefer she went back to printing but teacher is adamant she does not and will not mark her printed submitted work. I do lots of Lego building etc to try to work on her fine motor skills.

It is clear that being at home is not helping at all as she doesn’t want to write at all and is missing school terribly. She uses freshly sharpened 2B pencils and definitely pushes too hard on the page but I have no idea how to teach her to write correctly (I’ve never had great handwriting myself!). Every request to get her practicing results in tears and arguments; every piece of submitted work to school results in teacher castigating her for her handwriting and I have no idea how to help. Suggestions welcome?!

Can you get her one of those handwriting books where they trace the shapes to start with, then join the dots, then do a few independently on the printed lines? If she just did 5 mins a day with that it would probably improve quite quickly. I know just what you mean though - I've had a real struggle trying to get my boys to write anything much at home.

I swear by Write From the Start and am doing it with both my kids. The older has seen an amazing improvement.

She can form the printed letters just fine but seems to completely forget how to do it with these “lead ins”. She’s so disheartened by it all now that she cries if we ask her to write anything. I wasn’t taught to write this way so I don’t know how important it is or how to improve it.

I’ll order write from the start- just have no idea how I’ll convince her to do it!

It’s a bit more play-y. Bribe with haribo and get a page a day done. My ds vvv résistant so I feel your pain.

Ask the teacher to send you some practice sheets. I wouldn't "unlearn" the lead-ins. Most schools are moving to cursive now and it will set her back in handwriting sessions when they get back to school if she has to re-learn the basics when the rest are moving into joins.

I'm not sure how your school is providing work but if the teacher is insisting they keep up a certain standard of handwriting then they should provide some demonstration. At this age, kids need a model and practice. I am pre-recording lessons for my KS1 class but I am including some handwriting demonstrations and practice time.

Seeing them all on live lessons has highlighted how dreadful my Y1 DS's letter formation is. I've decided to do 10 minutes of handwriting each morning, using different multi-sensory trays. So this morning he had blue sand on silver shiny paper and tomorrow I am planning shaving foam on a mirror. I found one of the sticks you use for scratch art but a chopstick, pencil, stick, finger, anything would do. If you look on Pinterest for sensory writing there are lots of good ideas. It is a lot more motivating than the same old writing on paper with a pencil. I just quickly made some letter cards from coloured paper but you can download that kind of thing from places like Twinkl.