In order to support pupils in developing their handwriting skills, and to foster values of pride and high aspirations, Cavendish Primary School follows the Martin Harvey Handwriting programme Achieving Excellence in Handwriting.

Refer to the ‘Achieving Excellence in Handwriting’ document by Martin Harvey and Debbie Watson for the sequence of lessons and explanation of individual letter formation and joins.

Lowedges Junior Academy follows a progressive scheme, based on the works of Martin Harvey, which contains consistent language and focuses on the four letter formation families. As our children begin to learn to form letters correctly, children are taught handwriting rhymes to support them with remembering the formation and the shape.

Handwriting lessons follow the sequence of lessons from Martin Harvey Debbie Watson. These are progressive starting from single letter formation to the more complex joins. Each lesson begins with a warm up which usually practises the tall, small and tail lines.

In September 2018, we adopted a new approach to handwriting at our school called ‘Achieving Excellence in Handwriting’ written by Martin Harvey and Debbie Watson. Formation of lower letters is taught with letters grouped together in families: Put your pencil to bed.

At Farndon Primary School we follow the Martin Harvey method for teaching handwriting along with Write Dance for Early Years. This means that we do not follow a bought ‘scheme’; rather we use a consistent approach of teaching handwriting throughout the school using Martin Harvey’s guidelines and clear terminology.

In EYFS, the children will learn the letter names and begin to write single letters of lowercase and uppercase letters when fine motor skills are developed enough to support pencil control. The children will use books with the FS lines on half a page.

Martin Harvey, agreeing with this, states that: ‘It is vital that teacher modelling is good, teaching language is appropriate and teachers have a clear understanding of how to structure a handwriting lesson and have effective strategies to use. These are of greater importance than the actual handwriting style itself.’.

We teach handwriting using the ‘Improvement in School through Handwriting and Art’ (ISHA— Martin Harvey) handwriting scheme. This is based on the Nelson handwriting scheme.

At Wellgate Primary School, we follow the Martin Harvey method for teaching handwriting. This means that we do not follow a bought ‘scheme’; rather we use a consistent approach of teaching handwriting throughout the school using Martin Harvey’s guidelines and clear terminology.