TroveTools

Joined Handwriting

English · Year 1–Year 6

Worksheets for this ↓

Type a word and watch it written with a pen, in print, precursive or joined.

Use this on paper

Handwriting practice for every letter family, on paper, for Year 1.

Handwriting practice: All Letter Families · £4.00 · 7 worksheets · No subscription.

See it in the shop

About the joined writing

Type a word and press Write, and the board writes it on proper four-line handwriting paper with a pen, one stroke after another, with a gold ring on the nib so the class can see where each letter starts and which way it goes.

There are four styles of the same letters. Print is each letter on its own. Precursive adds the flick on the end of each letter, so the letters are ready to join but still stand apart. Lead-ins is precursive with a lead-in line from the baseline into every letter as well, which is how many schools teach letters before joining them. Joined starts each word with a lead-in from the line and joins every letter to the next. Switching style writes the same word again, which is the best way to show a class what a join is.

The joins are the part a class gets wrong, and they are all here: the diagonal join from the line up to the next letter, the same join up to a tall letter like l or h, and the horizontal join along the top from o, r, v and w. The join into a round letter goes up and over the top of it, and the pen turns back round the letter, which is how a joined a is formed.

Every small letter but q joins: b and p join out along the bottom of the bowl, g, j and y with a looped tail, and f is looped at the top and the bottom. A q has a straight tail and the pen lifts after it, as in the England handwriting model. Capitals are never joined. In joined writing the dots and the crosses go on once the word is finished, because stopping to dot an i half way through breaks the join.

There are lists to pick from instead of typing: the letters on their own, a list of short words for each kind of join, the Year 1 and Year 2 common exception words and the Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6 word lists. The list button shows every word in the list, so you can pick this week's spellings, and Next goes through it a word at a time.

A word is written as big as the big lines allow. Type more and it is written smaller, on smaller lines, so the letters always reach the dashed line they belong at, and a long sentence goes onto two lines.

The letters are our own, drawn for this board. Every handwriting scheme in English schools shares the same basic formations, and these follow those, but they are not any one scheme's letters. If your school's scheme forms a letter differently, show the class both and talk about the difference.

How to use it on your whiteboard

  1. 1Press Type and type a word or a sentence, or press the list button and pick a word from a list.
  2. 2Press Write to watch it written with the pen. Next writes the next word from the list.
  3. 3Press Print, Precursive, Lead-ins or Joined to write the same word in another style.
  4. 4Press Loop to keep it going, and Trace to let the class write over the faint letters.
  5. 5Use Pen and lines for the speed, the colour and the size of the pen, and to write on plain paper.

Questions

Which handwriting scheme does it follow?
None in particular. The letters are drawn for this board and follow the formations most schemes share: round letters start at the top right and go anticlockwise, down letters start at the top, and every joined word starts with a lead-in from the line. Schemes differ in the details, such as whether f has a tail or whether to join after b and p.
Does every letter join?
Every small letter but q does. A q's tail ends a long way below the next letter, so the pen lifts after it. Some schemes lift after b, g, j, p, x, y and z as well. If yours does, write those words in Lead-ins and show the class where your scheme lifts.
How much can I type?
A word or a sentence. The more you type, the smaller it is written, and a long sentence goes onto two lines. It stops taking letters once the writing would be too small to read from the carpet.
Can I share what is on the board?
Yes, with the Share button. The link carries the words and the style, so it opens on the same writing.