Handwriting Teaching Resources

Explore free handwriting worksheets, classroom alphabet posters, and more activities for kids that have been teacher-created for primary teachers. There's even a handwriting worksheet generator to help students improve their handwriting!

Whether you're working on handwriting practice with your prep students or teaching cursive writing to year 3, we've got you covered with teacher resources that have undergone the Teach Starter teacher team's rigorous review process.

New to teaching kids to write by hand? The teachers on our team have had to teach a brand-new grade level after years away, so we’ve put together a quick guide!

What Are the 3 Stages of Handwriting Development?

Teaching students to print in legible handwriting starts well before they put pencil to paper to spell out their names. There's a lot of handwriting practise along the way!

The process typically takes the form of three distinct stages:

1. Pre-Handwriting Patterns — This stage of handwriting involves creating shapes with the pencil and learning the different directional pushes and pulls required to form letters. Students may practise tracing different types of lines and shapes to prepare them for letter formation.
2. Single Letter Formation — Next, students progress to forming individual letters. You'll want to teach students to form groups or families of letters that have similar shapes and directional pushes and pulls. Once they've gotten one concept down, you can move on to the formation of other letters that are formed differently. In this stage, students learn both the formation of lowercase and uppercase letters.
3. Joined Handwriting — This final stage of handwriting puts it all together — literally! In this stage, students will begin forming words on the page with their pencils and will soon be writing full sentences (and later paragraphs!).

How Can Kids Improve Their Handwriting?

Perhaps you're past the stage of teaching handwriting, but you have students who are lagging behind their peers and need a little help to create legible print? We've got you covered there too!

Here are a few tips from our teacher team to help kids improve their handwriting in your class:

1. Find fun ways to practise handwriting. This is a skill students will need for the rest of their lives, but that doesn't mean it has to be boring. Even something as simple as having students practice writing jokes can make the experience more fun and engaging.
2. Work on motor skill development. Good handwriting is tied to fine motor skills, and sometimes a student just needs to practise manipulating more objects to build up those hand muscles.
3. Change up the instrument. Does your student need to use a different kind of pencil or a pencil that is a different size? Do they need a grip added to their pencil? Sometimes a change in the writing instrument can make a big difference in the writing itself.

Worry that your student is falling behind? You may want to meet with your school's special education experts. It may help to have the students evaluated by an occupational therapist to determine if additional intervention is needed.

In Australia, the fonts taught and used in schools change depending on which state or territory you are in. It can also change depending on the agreed guidelines of the school you are teaching at.

If you're teaching handwriting in Australia, it is important that you become familiar with the handwriting font used in your state or territory and the guidelines used in your school. This includes when to introduce cursive writing and the use of pens.

There are three main types of lines and the use of the lines in Australia:

1. Blue dotted thirds, with the body of the letter in between the two dotted lines
2. Blue dotted thirds, with the body of the letter in between the second dotted line and the last solid line
3. Red and blue lined thirds, with the body of the letter in between the two blue lines