What it is. A pencil is held in a pinch between thumb and pointer, resting on the middle finger — and the grip is only worth anything while a letter is being made with it.
Why our test works. A grip fails in one of two ways — the whole fist wraps the pencil, or the thumb crosses over the pointer. Both show instantly in a count of which fingers are doing what, so counting is faster and more reliable than judging whether a grip 'looks right'.
Leans on. Nothing yet — this is the first lesson of the year.
Watch for. A child who grips tightly is usually working too hard, not being careless. Loosen the hand before correcting the letters.
Hold the pencil in a pinch, and use it to form l, i and t from the top down. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher models the grip first — pinch, shelf, tail pointing back — then forms l, i, t with The class reads the teaching page printed at the top of the sheet — our own writing, so a child who was absent can still get the lesson.
You open by saying where this sits — what it follows and what it is part of — in one sentence, and then you give them the reason it matters, in your own words, for about ten seconds.
Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher models the grip first — pinch, shelf, tail pointing back — then forms l, i, t with that grip visible, saying 'top, straight down, stop.' Grip and letter are shown together because that is how they are used. The board copy is what they look back at when they stall, so it stays there for the whole lesson.
The We-do is the main whiteboard moment of the lesson — short answers, boards up on your signal, every child visible at once. Class sets the grip, teacher walks the rows and adjusts hands physically. Then the class air-writes each letter and traces it, teacher checking the grip has survived the writing. If the answer is a whole sentence rather than a word, take it on the printed sheet instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.
They read the teaching page — printed at the top of today's sheet — with you, either read-aloud or FASE, never round robin. Stop at the worked example and let them look at it.
Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves. Then they work alone: Trace then copy a row of each: l, i, t. Stop halfway and re-check your grip.
You close on the exit direction — Show me your pinch, then your best l. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Pinch it, rest it, point it back — then write with it.
HANDWRITING IS A CYCLE, NOT A UNIT. These ten lessons take the whole class once through grip, the twenty-six letters by formation family, words, and sentences — briskly, because for most of them it is a refresher and the point is to SEE WHERE THEY ARE. You are not expected to bring every child to mastery in ten lessons and you should not try.
What you are doing instead is generating a list. In lesson 5 every child writes the whole alphabet and circles what felt hard; in lessons 6-10 you watch who cannot hold a word or a sentence together. Those two things give you the children who need to go back through the cycle a second time.
For those children: (1) note the specific letters or the specific stage, not 'handwriting'; (2) re-run just that family from the alphabet decks, five minutes at a time, while the class does its writing block; (3) send the parent HOME SHEET for that stage, which carries the stroke diagrams, the fine-motor activities and what to say. Track it — a child who is still forming letters wrongly at Grade 2 will be slow at everything that needs a pen, and it is invisible unless someone is keeping a list.
A child who grips tightly is usually working too hard, not being careless. Loosen the hand before correcting the letters.