Ten short words for Year 1 handwriting, each copied twice from memory using look, cover, write and check. The words use curly caterpillar letters and ladder or one-armed robot letters: cat, dog, gap, cot, lip, tin, run and mat, plus the names Sam and Pat. On the third page pupils copy Sam has 3 cats and 9 dogs, Pat ran to the mat, and the digits 0 to 9. A teacher note lists what to check. It follows England National Curriculum handwriting.
Handwriting
“Begin to form lower-case letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the right place”
The teacher note says to check that c, a, d, g and o start at the top right and ladder letters start at the top.
Handwriting
“Form capital letters”
Sam and Pat in the table and both copied sentences need a tall capital S or P.
Handwriting
“Form digits 0-9”
Pupils write 0 to 9 in line 3 and the 3 and 9 in the first sentence. The note warns about backwards 3s and 5s.
Handwriting
“Understand which letters belong to which handwriting 'families' (i.e. letters that are formed in similar ways) and to practise these.”
The table groups curly caterpillar letters with ladder and one-armed robot letters.
Four steps: look at the word, cover it, write it, then check and write it again.
Ten words, from cat and dog to the names Sam and Pat, with columns to write, write again and tick.
Two sentences and a line of digits 0 to 9 to copy, with a reminder about g and p dropping below the line.
Handwriting book warm-up
Copy line 3 into handwriting books at the start of each day for a week.
Watch the starts
Stand behind pupils while they write cat and dog. The note tells you where each letter should begin.
Spelling pairs
Pupils test each other on the ten words, using the Check column for the tick.
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