How it works
- Type your text, one word or sentence per line.
- Choose your state’s style, and the line size for your year level.
- Pick the rows: trace then write, trace only, or copy from a model.
- Download the A4 PDF. Longer lists carry on over as many pages as they need.
Handwriting in the Australian Curriculum
In Foundation children learn to form letters correctly, starting and finishing in the right place. Over the next years they build fluency and move to joined handwriting in the style their state teaches. Tracing a model and then writing it independently, a little every day, is how that fluency grows.
Ideas for your own text
This week’s spelling words
Practising spelling words in joined handwriting links letter patterns with spelling. For the full set of activities, use the spelling worksheet maker.
A sentence a day
One sentence traced on Monday, traced and written mid-week and copied on Friday makes a short daily handwriting routine.
Handwriting by state
- NSWNSW Foundation Style, starting with unjoined letters in Kindergarten; school programs commonly bring in joins from Year 3.
- VictoriaVictorian Modern Cursive, taught from Foundation. Western Australia and the Northern Territory have used the same style.
- QueenslandThe Queensland Beginners Alphabet in Prep and Year 1, then Queensland Modern Cursive.
- SA and TasSouth Australia teaches its own model, beginning with a pre-cursive print; Tasmania has its own handwriting guidelines.
The national curriculum sets the stages: forming letters in Foundation (AC9EFLY08), unjoined writing in Years 1 and 2, and letters of consistent size by Year 3. Each state then sets the model and when joins begin, so check your school’s handwriting policy before you choose a style.
Summarised in our own words from the Australian Curriculum: English, Version 9.0 (ACARA) and state handwriting guidance.
