Writing sentences and speeding up

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 set. We know that this lesson is going to be going out 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. As we get into the end of our handwriting module, let's learn how we can write sentences putting them together, and also how we can write a little bit faster. I want you to try the following hand warm-ups before each handwriting session. This is really important for getting your hands ready for writing. Try and do each activity, or each before warm-up, 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. So you can see how white my fingertips are going because I'm squeezing and 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 that finger's tip to your thumb. Now, do some finger pulls and squeezes. Squeeze 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 wanted an extra challenge, you could try some finger separations. Okay, so those were your hand warm-ups. Please remember to do them before each handwriting session. Okay. Why is it important for us to practise speeding up our writing? Well, as we get older we're going to have to write more and more, and that'll mean that we're going to have to not only write whole sentences, but write several sentences in a row. For exams and tests we will have to write quickly to get our ideas out in time. And, when we're able to write faster it means that we can do our homework a little bit quicker. Practising writing quickly also helps us to learn how to write our letters speedily and without thinking about them too much. Pause the video now to get some paper and a pen or pencil, whatever you prefer. Restart once you're done. For our first activity, we're going to write our own sentence; you're going to write your own sentence. Get your pen and your paper and write a sentence of your choice. I think it's always fun to write something about your most favourite thing. Now, this could be your favourite game, your favourite food, your best friend, or family pet. It doesn't have to be too long, just a few words. Once you've finished, check back over your work to see if you can spot any mistakes. And, what you can also do is ask an adult to check for you. Okay, so let's write a sentence about our favourite thing. I am going to write, hmm, can you guess? I'm going to write about my dogs. So, I'm writing carefully, two dogs. There is, oopsie, Buster who is five, and Buddy who is 11 weeks old. I think they are adorable. Okay? Now, let's check our work. Right. Let's get a pen, and let's go for a thin pen, and I like to check my work in green. Okay, so let's choose this nice dark green, and what we're going to do now is check whether our letters are all sitting on the baseline. So, I'm going to go across, I can draw a line. Yeah, so far, they're all, uh-oh. What's happened here? That one's under the line. Okay, and, remember that we said f can go under sometimes. Uh-oh, look at that there. Under the line. Let's keep going. So far, it's not bad. That d could've been on top of the line a little bit better. And, oh, that h could've been on top of the line a bit better. Right, excellent. So we've checked if they're all sitting on the baseline, and they weren't doing too badly. Now, I want to use orange, and I want to check if my tall letters are tall enough. So, that one is correct, okay. Not bad these ones. Let's see, hmm, that one could've been taller couldn't it? This one here, and I think that one is too tall. It's not a tall letter but it looks very tall. Let's see, that one's tall enough, okay, oh! What about this d? I think that could've been higher, okay, taller. And that one looks good; let's go back to that one is tall enough, and that one actually. The k is tall enough, the l is tall enough. That d is tall enough. Guys, look at this. I think we're doing okay. That h could've been a bit taller, the k is tall enough; whoa, that tall letter is not formed very well is it? That h could've been a bit taller as well. And then that l I think could've been taller as well. Okay, so we can see there are some things there that we can improve on. Now let's check for, let's get red, and we're going to see if our, okay let's get red, and have a look and see if our letters are all the right size. So I can see that n is a little bit small, the tummy of that d is a little bit small, okay, and we can go along, I think that i could've been a little bit taller and the n could've been a better size as well. Okay, and as we said, that l could've been a better size. Okay, so there we've just checked our work. Yeah? Fantastic. And that noise in the background is actually Buddy who is wagging his tail because he knows that I've written about him. Silly dog. Pause the video now to have a go at writing your own sentence. Restart once you're finished. Now we're going to practise writing quickly. So, that same sentence that you wrote in the activity before this, you're going to write that again but this time you're going to see how fast you can write it. Okay? So the first time just write it as quickly as you can, but it has to be neat. Then, I want you to ask an adult to time you while you're writing the sentence over and over and over for two minutes. What you're then going to do is count up the total number of words and then divide this number by two and you can see your words per minute score. And that can be the target that you want to work towards meeting each time as you practise more to get speedier with your writing. Pause the video now to practise speed writing. Restart once you're finished. Our next activity we're going to write a sentence which has every letter in the alphabet in it. These are actually called pangrams. I've only just recently found that out. So, a sentence that you'll see quite often is: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Okay? Again, ask an adult to time you for two minutes, and see how many times you can copy the sentence over and over and over. And then, ask an adult to help you work out how many words per minute you wrote. Okay, so there you have the sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Or, the one that I made earlier is: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy squirrel by the oak tree. Okay, so for writing my alphabet sentence, I'm going to choose the longer one which was, this one here. Let's have a look. The quick, can you remember the longer sentence? Brown fox, yes, jumps. Let's get them sitting on the baseline nicely. Over Lovely. The lazy squirrel by the oak tree. Fabulous. Now, let us do a quick check, and see how we've done. Okay? We will go with yellow, and let's make it that thick. So now let's look at each word and see where we think we could've gone better. So I think that i could've been taller. I think my o and my r should be on the baseline a bit more. Okay, I think the rest of that looks quite good. I think my r could've been formed better there. I'm going to lay the lazy squirrel, oh, that i went a little under the line. By the, oh, that t's got an extra little flick at the top which makes it look like a little bit of an E. Oak tree. Fabulous. That looks really, really good. Pause the video now to practise speed writing the alphabet sentences. Restart once you're finished. If you're struggling to think of your own sentence, ask an adult to help you by giving you some ideas. If you're worried that you can't quite write it out, then you can ask an adult to write it for you and you can then copy it. Okay? Remember, you're sentence doesn't have to be incredibly long or complex. A few words will be absolutely fine. Don't forget your finger spaces! Remember, do the best for you. Take your time, work carefully, and be really proud of your writing. Practise, practise, practise. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to show pictures of your writing on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. See you soon!

Writing sentences and speeding up

Writing sentences and speeding up

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

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