How it works
- Type your text, one word or sentence per line.
- Choose print or Irish cursive, and the line size for your class.
- 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 Primary Curriculum
In the first years of school children learn to form letters correctly, starting and finishing in the right place, and then build the fluency to join them. 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.
Irish curriculum links
- Stage 1Children explore mark-making and begin to form upper- and lower-case letters, most of them as separate letters at first.
- Stages 2–3The Handwriting and presentation outcome moves towards writing legibly, and then fluently, in a chosen script.
- Stage 4Children choose and justify presentation styles to suit the text and its reader.
The Primary Language Curriculum (2019) does not name one handwriting style for Ireland. It speaks of a chosen script, so each school decides whether to begin with print or cursive and when to join. That is why this page offers both, and why it is worth checking your school’s handwriting plan before you print.
Irish words work too: names and words with a fada, such as Seán or fáilte, print with their accents. Copying a short Irish phrase from the board is an easy link between handwriting and Gaeilge.
Summarised in our own words from the Primary Language Curriculum (2019, NCCA).
