Handwriting Workbooks, Curriculum & Teacher Training

Teaching students handwriting curriculum

Confident handwriting leads to better learning.

The early learning years are filled with novelty and wonder. Children enter school and take on a new persona, a student, something separate from their home life and different entirely from anything they’ve been asked to be a part of. They learn how to get along with other students. They learn autonomy and how to express themselves as individuals. They also learn that symbols, including numbers, letters, shapes, and colors, are unique and have distinct meaning. Teachers create an environment that blends play with instruction time, allowing students the opportunity to learn and grow at their own pace while meeting the expectations of the classroom. Many of the foundational skills supporting literacy, language arts, and math are introduced during this important period, and children develop their sense of self as a student.

In recent years, learning how to form letters correctly, an important foundational skill, has seen a reduction in instructional time. However, the average student spends thirty to sixty percent of the school day engaged in writing activities. Even in today’s digitally dominated world, handwriting continues to be a primary way students demonstrate what they know. In many instances, written work is the means by which a teacher evaluates the child’s learning. Studies show that elementary-school-aged children with good handwriting have a greater ability to focus on spelling, reading, and sentence structure. In many instances, students with good penmanship receive better grades than those who struggle to handwrite well.

Why use Letter Leaders to Teach Writing

Letter Leaders is a complete and comprehensive handwriting program developed through years of evidenced-based research.

This program teaches children the proper way to handwrite by starting at the beginning of handwriting skill acquisition and follows this sequence:

Prewriting skills
Beginning formation of capital letters
Learning more advanced capital letters
Lowercase letter formation
Automatic and fluid handwriting practice

Once the classroom has mastered these prewriting skills, they will continue with the Letter Leaders program learning the correct way to form the capital letters followed by lowercase letters.

Children should complete each workbook beginning with Prewriting Skills, where students learn directional concepts, line identification and line formation. Once these important prewriting skills are mastered, students then move on to learning how to form capital letters in workbook two. Finally, once students have completed learning how to form capital letters they start workbook three where they will learn to form lowercase letters.

Using the Letter Leaders program for as little as 5 minutes per day will prepare your students with a solid foundation of proper letter formation and handwriting skills that they will use and rely on throughout their lives.

Handwriting Workbooks

Schools Currently Using Letter Leaders

Preschools and kindergarten programs across the country are using the Letter Leaders program to teach their students proper letter formation and handwriting skills.

Many of these schools were using programs that were working for their students or were too hard to teach. Once they learned about and started using Letter Leaders, they found that the program was each to teach, easy to learn from and most importantly, truly teaching their students how to handwrite correctly.

Letter Leaders provides practice with the basic line types that children will encounter when learning to write before introducing each letter. The letters are presented in an order that effectively builds on the children’s current level of fine motor ability through teaching letters comprised of “easier” lines (down and across lines) before more challenging ones (curve and slide lines). This provides our students with a challenging repertoire of tasks, while avoiding the “I can’t do it” burn out of handwriting entirely beyond their current ability level. The children feel accomplished when they have completed the book, and are proud to take home their workbooks and show off their certificateof completion included at the end of the book.

—Fisher Early Learning Center Abiyoyo Classroom – Sara Flansburg & Kristen Hall

We have been using Letter Leaders for the past three years. Each year we have noticed our children gaining fine motor strength and confidence through the program. The children are enjoying playing the games and working with the putty, but they get especially excited to work in their books. As teachers we love the clean pages that allow for the children to focus on learning. The terminology of top, middle, bottom can be translated to different lessons, subjects and activities throughout the year. We appreciate that the writing terms are so simple: down line, across line, slide line and curvy line. This helps us to be consistent when teaching the children how to write. Keeping the pages and vocabulary distraction free and to the point has benefited all of the different learners in our classroom. Letter Leaders is everything we need without the distractions and gimmicks to teach our students to learn to write. Our children have beautiful handwriting when they enter kindergarten.

—Fisher Early Learning Center Rainbow Fish – Jessica Kennedy and Tracy D’Angelo

I have replaced the program I have used for years with the Letter Leaders program because the books are engaging, well thought out and easy to use. This is a great program to use in a classroom.

—Deb H. Preschool teacher and educator since 1999

Letter Leaders is a great program for kids learning how to form lines and write letters. The books are colorful and the graphics are age appropriate. The directions are easy to understand and there is a status bar at the bottom of each page that is helpful for both teachers and parents to record the kid’s progress. I have used this program in both my preschool 3 year old classroom and my 4 year old classroom. I think books 1-3 are a really great introduction to writing in a typical classroom.

—Stephanie T. Lead preschool teacher

After more than 15 years teaching typical developing children and children with special needs, Letter Leaders is the only program that I’ve used that is developmentally appropriate, easy for anyone to teach and simple for children to use. From my experience teaching the program, I’ve found kids to be engaged and excited about learning. The program allows each child to be successful at her individual level. I’d recommend Letter Leaders for teachers and therapists looking for a positive handwriting program.

—Danielle Warren, COTA/L

Coaching & Support for Teachers

The Letter Leaders team has developed a variety of tools to support you while you use the program in your classroom. First of all, we made a manual! What does that mean? We created a handbook full of instructional material, supplemental games, and activities, that, in a nutshell, will take all of the guesswork out teaching the Letter Leaders program.

We also developed a 16-week instructional email series that supports the Letter Leaders learning curriculum. Beginning with prewriting skills, recipients will receive weekly emails providing tips, step-by-step instructions, and games to support the learning modules in each workbook. Click here to sign up to receive these emails.

And finally, we are blogging about all things handwriting! Check it out here to see just how important handwriting is. Recent blog posts discuss the benefits of learning to handwrite at a young age, the theory behind the Letter Leaders program, and more.

Key Features of the Letter Leaders Program

Letter Leaders is an evidence-based handwriting program that took over a decade to develop. Based on the principles of the motor learning and developmental theories, Letter Leaders is designed to teach students the proper way to form letters because those who do not need to focus their attention on how to form them correctly and neatly have more ability to focus on using handwriting as a form of written communication: to write notes and complete homework, book reports, and tests to the best of their ability.

With Letter Leaders, students are first taught four important prewriting skills. Once these prewriting skills are in place, students learn proper capital-letter formation. Finally, the program teachers lowercase-letter formation and beginning handwriting skills. Using Letter Leaders as little as five minutes per day, students will learn the correct way to form letters and develop a strong foundation for automatic handwriting. Teaching students the correct way to form letters does not need to be difficult. And with the right amount of practice and the use of the full Letter Leaders program, learning how to form letters correctly does not need to be difficult either.

Key features of the Letter Leaders program:

It is an evidence-based program developed by an expert in child development and handwriting instruction.
It is easy to teach and easy to learn.
It emphasizes building a strong foundation of prewriting skills before teaching students how to form letters.
It uses a multisensory approach appropriate for all types of learners.
It is designed to engage children as early as preschool in an easy and fun way to promote success at every stage in the program.

Letter Leaders is a sixteen-week program divided into three sections:

Prewriting skills
- Directional concepts
- Line identification
- Vertical line formation
- Horizontal line formation

Capital-letter formation
- Group One: L, F, E, H, T, I
- Group Two: C, O, G, Q
- Group Three: P, B, D, R
- Group Four: M, N, K, Z
- Group Five: A, W, V, Y
- Group Six: J, S, U, X

Lowercase-letter formation and beginning handwriting skills
- Group One: c, a, o, d, g, q, e
- Group Two: i, r, n, m, p, j
- Group Three: l, b, h, t, k, f
- Group Four: u, w, y
- Group Five: s, v, x, z

Letter Leaders Handwriting Workbooks & Educational Programs

The Letter Leaders Learn to Write Program

Rather than individual worksheets, each Letter Leaders workbook is full color with pages that are content rich, distraction free and easy for teachers or parents to teach.

Our Learn to Handwrite Workbooks

Each Letter Leaders workbook is full color with pages that are content rich, distraction free and easy for teachers or parents to teach children how to write.

Teacher Training

We offer the following training: teacher in-services, in-classroom consultation and instruction, parent training, 3-hour introductory training to ensure proper use of the program, and continuing education courses for therapists and educators.

Contact Us Today

Dr. Julie Tourigny
Office line: 303-333-4982
Fax: 877-506-0585
Email: jtourigny@letterleaders.com