Letter Formation

LETTER FORMATION

Before asking young children to hold a writing implement and control its manipulation in a small space, teachers should have them practice prewriting motor skills. At the board, students can practice controlling the direction of their arm and hand movements - left to right, counterclockwise and clockwise, top to bottom - before gripping a pencil. Students can also prepare for writing by 'writing' large with their arms extended, making large circles and lines on the carpet, or tracing and drawing geometric shapes.

Awareness of spatial relationships and directionality underlie the perception of and memory for letter forms and the ability to reproduce them manually.

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)

WRITING LETTERS

When children are learning to write individual letters, they are developing both graphomotor (hand movement) and orthographic (letter recognition) skill. To write a letter, the learning must discern the direction of line production - up, down, clockwise, counterclockwise, diagonal. For example, to learn the different between u, v and w, the student must notice that u has a curve and a straight line on the right, that v has two diagonal lines that meet in an angle, and that w looks like two v-forms joined together. Each letter is formed in space between the bottom line and the middle line of the handwriting paper.

These ordered component strokes involve recognition of letter size, directionality of movement, and position of lines in relation to one another. These component strokes - although kinesthetic and tactile - are learned and stored as linguistic symbols. That is, as students learn that letters represent speech sounds, syllables, and words, their images are stored in the brain's language centres.

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)

Letter Formation.webm

As letters are learned, students benefit from explicit teaching of letter features, spatial relationships, and sequences of strokes. Effective teaching involves (a) verbal descriptions and verbal coaching as students rehearse the strokes, and (b) showing model letters with numbered arrows indicating the sequence of strokes to be practiced.

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)

TEACHING A NEW LETTER

This routine has three steps that follow an I DO, WE DO, YOU DO structure. First, the teacher explicitly describes and models the sequence of strokes in the letter. Then, he or she provides guided practice with immediate feedback before having students practice independently. Note that easily confusable letters such as b, d, p and q may be contrasted.

Say, 'Let's write the lowercase letter b.' Draw a b on a large piece of lined paper. 'This is lowercase b. Watch me first. (a) Start at the hat line (top line) and go down to touch the shoe line (bottom line). Stop at the show line and don't go any further. (b) Without picking up your pencil, go back up to the belt line (middle line) and make a circle to come back down to the shoe line.'
Say, 'Let's do one together.' Have students follow along as you describe and model the sequence of strokes again.
Say, 'Now it's your turn. Make five more lowercase b's'. Pause for students to write. 'Which one looks the most like mine? Circle the one that is your best one.'

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)

DID YOU KNOW...?

Letter formation takes longer to learn than letter recognition, letter-sound association, and sound blending because so many spatial and visual-motor memory skills are involved.

GROUPING LETTERS FOR TEACHING LETTER FORMATION

Letters can be grouped together for instruction according to their shapes and first strokes. For example:

Counterclockwise circle letters: a, c, o, d, g, q
Letters with downward first line: b, f, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, t, u
Letters with horizontal lines and diagonals: e, s, v, w, x, y, z

When teaching handwriting, focus primarily on lowercase letters first because the majority of words students write will be lowercase. It is counterproductive to ask students to write lengthy compositions by hand before they have automatised good letter-formation habits.

(LETRS, Louisa Moats & Carol Tolman)

nsw dept of education

In New South Wales public schools, students learn to use the NSW Foundation Style writing font. This resource may provide guidance and activities to use with students in the early years. This resource will complement the phonics sequence activities. Each letter has a short script to support students in forming letters. The resource is an overview of lower case and capital or upper case letters and numbers in the NSW Foundation Style.

Please click on the image to view the available resource.

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