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Handwriting Replay

English · Reception–Year 4

Write on the lines, then watch it written again, stroke by stroke.

About the handwriting

Write on the board with a finger or a pen, on proper four-line handwriting paper, and press Rewrite. The board writes it again in front of the class at a speed they can follow, one stroke after another, with a gold ring on the nib so they can see which way the line is going.

That is the part a finished word cannot show. An a written anticlockwise from the top and an a made of a circle with a stick stuck on look the same once they are done, and only one of them joins later. Replayed, the difference is the whole picture.

Every stroke is replayed at the same steady speed, with the same short lift between strokes. So the replay shows the order and the direction of each stroke, which is what is being taught, and not how long you stopped to think between letters.

Turn on Trace and the writing goes faint for the class to write over in blue. Turn on Loop and the rewrite goes round and round, so a child can trace along with it as it is written. Turning Trace off rubs the tracing out, and Undo brings it back.

A tap makes a dot, so the i, the j and a full stop are all there in the replay in the right place in the order.

How to use it on your whiteboard

  1. 1Write a letter or a word on the lines.
  2. 2Press Rewrite to watch it written again, stroke by stroke.
  3. 3Pick Slow, Medium or Fast, and press Loop to keep it going.
  4. 4Press Trace and let the class write over the faint letters.
  5. 5Use the Pen button for colour and size, and the Lines button for bigger or smaller lines, or none.

Questions

Does it replay at the speed I wrote it?
No, and on purpose. Every stroke is replayed at one steady speed, so the replay shows where each stroke starts and which way it goes rather than every pause along the way. Slow, Medium and Fast change that speed for the whole word.
Can I share what I wrote?
Yes, with the Share button, for a letter or a few words. A whole paragraph of handwriting is a lot of points and is too long to fit in a link, and the board says so rather than giving you a broken one.
Can I type a word and have it written out for me?
Not here. A typed word would be written in somebody else's handwriting font, and the point of the board is that the class sees how you form the letters, the way you want them to form theirs.
Two children pressed the board at once and only one line appeared.
The pen follows one finger at a time. Two strokes written at once would come back as one step of Undo, so the second finger is ignored until the first one lifts.