Letter formation: how to teach your child to write letters

01

Why does school teach lowercase letters first?

Look at any page of a picture book and count the capital letters. There are only a handful: one at the start of each sentence, and one for each name. Almost everything your child reads is lowercase, so that is what they learn to recognise first, and what they learn to write first.

Phonics works the same way. When your child learns the sound “sss”, they see and trace the lowercase s. The reading books they bring home are written in lowercase, with capitals only where a sentence starts or a name appears. Writing the same shapes they are reading means each letter is learned once, by eye and by hand together.

So where do capitals come in?

Capitals come a little later, for a clear job: names, the word “I”, and the start of a sentence. In England, forming capital letters is part of the Year 1 handwriting curriculum, alongside lowercase letters and the digits 0 to 9.

Lots of children arrive at school writing their name in capitals, because that is how a grown-up first showed them. That is nothing to worry about. Gently swap to a capital for the first letter and lowercase for the rest, the way it appears on their peg or their book bag: Maya, not MAYA.

02

Letter families and where each letter starts

Many schools teach handwriting in letter families: groups of letters that begin with the same movement. Learn the movement once and it works for every letter in the family. The names vary from school to school, but these four are common.

• 2626lowercase letters
• 44families to learn them in
• 11starting move per family

• Curly caterpillar (c a d g o q e s f): start by curling back round, as if writing c. The e starts with a short line across, then curls the same way.
• Long ladder (l i t u y j): start at the top and go straight down.
• One-armed robot (r b n h m k p): go down, then back up the same line and over.
• Zig-zag monster (z v w x): straight, slanting lines, starting at the top.

Families matter most for the letters children muddle. b is a robot letter: down, then back up and round. d is a caterpillar letter: round like c first, then up and down. Start in the right place and the two can never come out the same.

In England, the Year 1 curriculum asks children to understand which letters belong to which handwriting families and to practise them, so your child may well come home talking about caterpillars and robots.

03

How to form letters: start in the right place, in one movement

Letter formation means the way a letter is made: where the pencil starts, which way it travels and where it stops. Two letters can look the same on the page and still have been made very differently. The way they were made is what matters later, when your child needs to write quickly and, one day, join up.

• Start at the top. Almost every lowercase letter starts at the top. The e is the one that starts in the middle.
• Go the right way round. Round letters like c, a, d, g and o go anticlockwise, curling back round to the left.
• Keep the pencil on the paper. Most letters are one movement. A few need a second stroke: the cross on t and f, the dots on i and j and, in many schools, the second line of k and x.
• Sit on the line. Tall letters reach up, tails like g, j, p, q and y hang below, and everything else sits on the line.

In England, the Year 1 curriculum puts it simply: children should begin to form lowercase letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the right place. The tracing pad shows exactly that. The numbers give the order of the strokes and the arrows give the direction.

When do children start joined handwriting?

This varies between schools. The national curriculum introduces the strokes needed to join letters in Year 2, but many schools start joining in Year 1, and some teach letters with a lead-in flick from Reception so that joining is easy later. Follow your child’s school rather than teaching joins at home first.

04

Pencil grip by age, and what to do before writing

Children don’t start with a neat pencil grip. They grow into it, usually through four stages, as the muscles in their shoulder, arm and hand get stronger. The ages in the stepper are rough: children move through the stages at different speeds, and overlap between them is normal.

By the end of Reception, the early years framework hopes most children will hold a pencil effectively, using a tripod grip in almost all cases. A four-year-old with a static tripod, moving their whole hand, is right on track. Some children settle on a four-finger grip, with the ring finger also on the pencil, and research suggests that is usually just as fast and neat.

Pre-writing: big movements first

Small, careful finger movements rest on a steady shoulder and arm. The best practice before writing often doesn’t look like writing at all.

• Big movements: chalk on the patio, painting a fence with a brush and water, ribbon swirls, drawing huge circles on paper taped to the wall.
• Strong fingers: squeezing and rolling playdough, tearing paper, pegs on a line, picking things up with tongs.
• Short crayons: a crayon snapped in half is hard to hold in a fist, so it gently invites the fingers to take over.
• Patterns before letters: circles, waves, zig-zags and straight lines down, which are the pieces that letters are made from.

05

Writing letters backwards: why b and d get mixed up

If your child writes b for d, or an s that faces the wrong way, they are in very good company. Reversals are a normal part of learning to write, and many children still make some until they are about 7.

There is a good reason. For everything else in a young child’s life, direction doesn’t change what a thing is. A cup facing left is still a cup; a dog walking the other way is still a dog. Letters are the odd ones out, where flipping the shape makes a different letter. Learning that takes time, and b and d, p and q, and 2 and 5 are the usual suspects.

How to help with b and d

• Start them differently. b starts at the very top and goes down, like a long ladder, then back up and round. d starts like c, curling round first, then goes up tall and back down. Practised from the right start, they can’t be swapped.
• Work on one at a time. Practise b for a week until it is secure, then d. Practising the two side by side can make the muddle worse.
• Say the sound as you write. “b, b, bat and ball” as the line goes down and the ball goes round.

Reversals on their own are not a sign of dyslexia. If your child is still reversing a lot after about 7, or reading and spelling are a real struggle as well, talk to their teacher, who can look at the whole picture.

06

Little and often: say the sound as you write it

Five minutes a day does far more than half an hour at the weekend. Little hands tire quickly, and a tired hand starts cutting corners, which is how a wrong habit creeps in. Stop while it is still fun.

1. Pick one letter, ideally one your child is learning at school.
2. Show it slowly, saying where you start and which way you go.
3. Your child writes it big first: in the air, in sand, with a wet paintbrush.
4. Then a few on paper, saying the sound each time.
5. Choose the best one together and give it a circle.

Why say the sound?

Saying “sss” while writing s links the shape, the movement and the sound in one go. It is exactly how phonics lessons work, and it is practice for spelling, where your child hears a sound and has to write it down. Use the pure sound, not the letter name. Our guide to pure sounds has every one recorded, and the first letters most schools teach are in s, a, t, p, i, n.

Once a few letters are secure, writing real words is the next step, and that is the same skill as blending, run backwards: hear the sounds in “sat”, then write each one.