The key principles of the Kine

Handwriting is of fundamental importance. It is one of the key foundational skills, therefore handwriting is taught daily throughout school, starting in the EYFS, right the way through to Year 6. 

Kinetic Letters is the handwriting programme used at Wednesbury Oak. It focuses on 4 main threads:

• Making bodies stronger
• Holding the pencil
• Learning the letters
• Flow and fluency

The programme aims at enabling all children to develop legible handwriting, whereby handwriting becomes a tool and not a hindrance to learning.

Children  focus on strengthening their power pack (their core body and arm strength), learn the importance of posture and why they need to be strong for writing. Although writing is a fine finger operation, core body and arm strength is needed to control their fingers and the pencil effectively for writing. Therefore, in all handwriting sessions, Making Bodies Stronger poses and activities are practiced before children pick up a pencil to write. 

At Wednesbury Oak, we understand that it is crucial to ensure that this foundational skill becomes automatic for children, as this enables them to free up their working memory for  greater focus on the composition of their writing as they progress through school.

With the development of automaticity, handwriting becomes a valuable tool and not a hindrance to learning. The Kinetic Letters font covers all the letters in the alphabet and is based on a set of rules that have been made a simple as possible to enable fast learning. The order in which letters are taught recognises the cognitive development of children.

 Our handwriting sessions are taught to the whole class, with adaptated  targets where needed. Additional handwriting and fine and gross motor skills interventions may take place for some children.