On this page, you will find a range of videos and documents to help support handwriting for your child. As a school, we hold the teaching and development of every child’s handwriting as a high priority. We encourage all children to take pride in not only the content of each piece of work they produce, but also the presentation.

Kinetic Letters

At Joseph Turner we use Kinetic Letters® - a handwriting programme for use in primary and secondary schools.

The scheme follows four main threads of:

• Making bodies stronger,

• Holding the pencil,

• Learning the letters, and

• Flow and fluency

It enables children to develop legible handwriting that is produced quickly and automatically. With the development of automaticity, handwriting becomes a valuable tool and not a hindrance to learning.

The Kinetic Letters® font covers all the letters in the alphabet and is based on a set of rules that have been made as simple as possible to enable fast learning. The order in which letters are taught recognises the cognitive development of children.

Strength: Writing is a fine finger operation; children must have core body and arm strength to be able to control their fingers precisely.

Pencil hold: The pencil/pen grip must be comfortable to allow writing for long periods (eg exams often last for hours). Pens and pencils with a triangular cross-section assist in developing the correct hold.

Letter formation: The movements to form the letters begin with whole body movements and progress through writing in sand trays to writing on whiteboards and finally writing on paper. In Kinetic Letters®, all the letters and numbers are formed by one of two monkeys, a brave one (Bounce) who goes to the top branch of the tree, and a scared one (Skip) who goes to the lower branch.

Flow and fluency: Letter movements are minimised to help a fast writing style to develop. There are no lead-in strokes (a waste of time and effort).

Teaching of the programme commences in Reception where children are taught the correct pencil hold:

Children are taught all of the Kinetic Letter families, upper case letter formation and number formation. Once children have mastered the letter families and are starting and finishing letters in the correct place, they will be taught to join their writing following the Kinetic Letters joining programme.