Basic cursive writing

Occupational therapy

﻿Hi, I'm really looking forward to our lesson today. I hope you are too. Before we get started, this is just a little reminder. We're here to support any approaches you might already be using. And any work you might have already been sent. We know that this lesson is going to be going up to so many different children and families. So if you're not sure about anything or have any questions, then please do contact your usual therapy team. In today's lesson, we're going to look at just the basics of cursive writing, also known as joined up writing. I want you to try the following hand warmups before each hand-writing session. This is really important for getting your hands ready for writing. Try and do each activity or each type of warmup, say 10 times. If you're finding that it's tricky to do one warm up with both hands together at the same time, then just do one hand at a time. Hands open and closed, nice fist and open. Stretch those fingers. Now we're going to interlock our fingers and squeeze our hands. You can see how wide my fingertips are going because I'm squeezing, I'm getting all of that feedback into my hands and my fingers. Okay? Squeeze. Now I want you to clasp your fingers and just pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. Excellent. Next let's do some finger taps on the table. If you struggle doing both hands at once, then just do one hand at a time. You can also try finger taps on the tips of your thumbs. Okay, so take each finger and just gently touch their fingers tip to your thumb. Now do some finger pulls and squeezes. Squeeze your fingers as you pull them up and away from your body. This is really good activity for getting your fingers ready for writing. And don't forget your thumbs. And if you want to do an extra challenge, you could try some finger separations. Okay, so those were your hand warmups. Please remember to do them before each hand-writing session. Why do we practise cursive writing? Well, for some schools, they want you to learn how to print first and feel really confident with that, and then they will ask you to write in cursive or joined up writing. Other schools, teach you to write in cursive, right from the start. So it just depends on your school and what they prefer to teach you. For a lot of people, writing in cursive can be faster and neater, and it could also be easier. But, for a lot of other people, writing in cursive can be really quite tricky. And remember different schools have different ways of teaching cursive and cursive joins. So find out from your teacher, how they would like you to do your cursive writing. Pause the video now to get the items that you're going to need today. Which is simply, paper or something to write on and a pen or pencil. Restart once you're done. So what we're going to do for our first activity is individual cursive letters. So to get used to joining up letters, we're just going to spend some time learning how to write them first, and then join up two without taking our pencil off the paper. Most letters join onto the next on the baseline, but some will join midway up the line. If a letter has a dot or cross on it, we wait until we've finished all the letters and then we go back and finish them off. If you want a bigger challenge, you can try joining up three or more letters together. You could also try mixing up different letter joins and different letters that need to be finished off afterwards. So let's take out the sheet, and try our different letter joins. Okay, let's have a look at individual letters and how we would join them up. Okay, so I'm just going to write the letters of the alphabet, there you had A, I'm actually going to make my pen a little bit thinner. Let's try that. Now the letter B. Okay. And you're going to try each of those letters remembering to find out how your school would like you to do your joins. Cause for example, F sometimes written like that or it's sometimes written like that. Okay, and just have a go and see how it feels, to do each letter in joined up. Okay? Is it harder for you or are you finding it a lot easier? Alright. I sometimes find it quite a bit easier to write in joined up righting. And for me, it's faster. But, not everyone finds joined up writing faster. So it really just depends, on what's going to work for you. Okay, so there you can see I've done all the letters. Now, if we were to have a look and say, okay, let's see how we've done with these letters. I'm going to highlight bits that I think I could have done better. So I think my join there could have been a lot better. I think, there, oh, that yellow, no one can see that yellow. Sorry guys, let's make it green. The join there could have been better, I think, over there. So can you see a pattern with the letters that I've struggled with? I wonder if you have noticed that I have struggled with all my magic C letters, so I, I'm going to have to practise all my magic C letters. Which ones do you struggle with? Have a go. Restart once you're finished. Now we can look at writing short words. And so, we can then make up a short word, for example, can, and think about how each letter is going to join to the next one. You can start with just three or four letter words, and then as you get more confident, you can make your words longer. Okay, have a go at practising with lots of different letter groups, and also tall letters and tail letters together. And if you're up for a challenge, why don't you try writing a very short sentence. Pause the video, to practise writing short words. Restart once you're finished. Let's look at joining up the whole alphabet. Okay. This is going to be a real challenge. So we're going to try and write out the whole alphabet, joining each letter as we go. So this is really going to give you the chance to practise every letter join that there is. Remember, don't forget to go back afterwards and do your dots and your crosses. Okay, now for a real challenge, let's try and join all of these letters, in one go, without lifting up our pens. Are you ready? Let's start. Okay. Look at where I'm joining. D, E, oh, which F am I going to do? F, G, H, I, J, K, oh my goodness. O, M. Now I have to lift my hand up. N, O, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and, Z. I need to go back and put the dots on my letters and the crosses. Wow. That was kind of hard for me. You have a go. Pause the video to practise joining up the whole alphabet. Restart once you're finished. Some ways to make writing words easier is that if you're struggling to think of a word, you can ask an adult to help you. They could give you part of a word or the whole word. If you're struggling to write it, or you're not quite sure how to do it, you can ask an adult to write it for you to copy, or even, for you to trace over until you get more confident. Do small words first and then when you're ready, you can try longer words. Remember do the best for you. Don't rush, don't worry about what others are doing. Practise, practise, practise. If you'd like to, please ask your parents or carer to share your joined up writing on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. Bye. See you soon.

Basic cursive writing

Basic cursive writing

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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