Teaching Children How to Write by Hand: What do they need to Learn?

The following extract is taken from PETAA Book The Alphabetic Principle and Beyond...Surveying the Landscape, edited by Robyn Cox, Susan Feez and Lorraine Beveridge, published in 2019. This piece is from a chapter contributed by Noella M. Mackenzie.

The teaching of handwriting in primary schools is a requirement of all the current Australian national, state and territory curriculum documents. The Australian Curriculum: English provides guidance as to what should be taught and when it should be achieved, but provides minimal support for how to teach handwriting. Handwriting scripts vary across states and territories and their alignment with common fonts or typefaces used in printed books also varies. Therefore, where a child attends school will determine the script they will learn and how different that script is to those they will be encountering in books. Teachers need to help children navigate these differences. 

Explicit instruction in how to form the letters of the alphabet correctly could help children become more print-aware and reduce the number of children whose poor handwriting is inhibiting their ability to produce texts efficiently. Children need to learn about size, position and direction and well as where to start, which way to go and where to finish each of the 52 lower- and upper-case letters.

Automaticity of letter formation leads to greater control of the letters of the alphabet. Instruction and practice are necessary for a child to develop automaticity. For a short, easy-to-read practical article on the 'why, who, what, when and how of writing instruction;, see Mackenzie & Spokes (2018). The knowledge and efficiency of automaticity supports children's writing as well as their ability to read.