Kinetic Letters at New Road Primary School.

Handwriting is of fundamental importance to educating our pupils because pupils who do not learn to read and write fluently and confidently are, in every sense, disenfranchised.  The mastery of automaticity in handwriting is therefore one of the key priorities of our school. Handwriting is a physical activity that involves movement and recognition skills that need to be learnt and become part of the automatic cognitive skill set of the pupil.  To achieve this, we have chosen the Kinetic Letters handwriting program.

    The outcomes that we strive to ensure all our pupils achieve are:

• Having fluent, legible and speedy handwriting that can be performed automatically, so that the attention of the brain is on the content of the writing.
• Having the stamina and skills to write at length, with accurate spelling and punctuation.
• Having competence in transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition.
• Writing clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.
• Having a comfortable and efficient pencil hold and working position.

The Kinetic Letters program has four threads.

• Making bodies stronger
• Holding the pencil (for speed, comfort and legibility)
• Learning the letters
• Flow and fluency  

Making bodies stronger: 

Children must have core body and arm strength to be able to control their fingers precisely and have the finger strength to write. The children carry out exercises to help strengthen their bodies.

 Holding the pencil: 

Children need to have a comfortable pencil grip that allows them to write for long periods. Children use the ‘three friends hold’ to grip their pencil, as this is proven to be the most efficient grip to write comfortably at length.

 Learning the letters: 

When learning to form letters, the children begin with whole body movements and progress through writing in sand trays to writing on whiteboards and finally writing on paper. In Kinetic Letters, all the letters and numbers are formed by starting at one of two monkeys, a brave one (Bounce) who goes to the top branch of the tree, and a scared one (Skip) who goes to the lower branch.  The letters are not learnt in alphabetical order. Instead, the are learnt in ‘families’, where the letters have been grouped according to how they are formed. Each letter has a rhyme that goes with it. The children follow the ‘move it, say it, write it’ approach to help remember the handwriting patterns off by hear.

Flow and fluency: 

Children work on producing letter movements that allow them to build stamina to write at length. This includes learning which letters can be joined and which letters are best left unjoined (break letters)

• Building physical strength underpins handwriting and concentration. This knowledge informs the working positions that children use for writing and the strengthening targets they work on.
• Pupils are not expected to do anything before they are developmentally ready for it.
• The different components of writing are mastered individually before being used in combination.
• Letters are learnt as movements, not as visual shapes, and movement remains central to developing automaticity in letter formation, flow and fluency.
• Posture is important in developing the correct position for handwriting and so children are taught how to organise their working position and paper position to enable comfortable and fluent writing from the start.
• Correct pencil hold is taught from the start (ie as soon as a tri-pod grip is developmentally appropriate).

The Kinetic Letters program is commenced in Nursery and is used throughout the School.  By the end of KS1, the aim is that some children will be using some of the strokes needed to join letters; teaching this will start in Year 2. Handwriting sessions are taught to the whole class, with differentiated targets where needed. Additional handwriting and fine and gross motor skills interventions may take place for some children.