Writing

WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE!

Fine Motor

Fine motor practice and development is a critical part of Foundation student's writing progression. It develops the students ability to use the correct pencil grip, form letters correctly and improve their overall independence when completing daily tasks.

It is important to engage in this type of activity on a daily basis.

A range of fine motor activities that the students can engage in are:

• Tracing letters, numbers and patterns.

• Cutting shapes and following lines.

• Threading

• Building and creating with Lego and small blocks

• Forming letters, numbers or creating different objects with Playdough

• Kinetic Sand

• Activities using tweezers or tongs to pick up, move or sort items

• Hole punchers to create confetti

• Using pincer grip to complete tasks such as undoing buttons, tying shoelaces, zipping and unzipping, turning pages and picking up small items such as marbles or dried beans.

Handwriting

In Foundation, the skill of handwriting is usually taught separately to 'free writing'. Handwriting involves students being able to correctly form their alphabet letters in upper and lowercase. In Foundation the students learn how to appropriately size their letters and the direction in which they are formed when writing.

Students are also encouraged to use the correct pencil grip as this is an important habit that can often take time to develop.

Suggested activities for handwriting:

• Using laminated alphabet and number charts.

• Practicing the correct letter formation in child's name (using laminated name sheet).

• Using a whiteboard to practice forming letters in the correct direction.

• Tracing over letters, words or short sentences - focusing on direction and formation of letters.

Free Writing

The focus of free writing in Foundation is for students to transfer their ideas onto paper. During free writing time, students are encouraged to take risks and have a go at sounding out unknown words. We encourage all spelling attempts at this time and provide constructive feedback when correcting students work. It is important to boost your child's confidence when free writing as this will support their ability to develop and construct pieces of writing independently.

Suggested ideas for free writing:

• Book response (my favourite part).

• Diary/journal writing (recounting events or activities).

• Putting words of the week or M100W into sentences.

• Use rhyming to make up silly sentences (tin, pin, bin).

• Write about something you like to do or play.

This platform will be updated with writing activities and links on a fortnightly basis to assist with your at home learning.

Each fortnight you will have the opportunity to collect new writing resources from the classroom which correlates with our writing curriculum.