⭐ More Than Neat Books: The Case for Teaching Handwriting Explicitly

How handwriting supports memory, fluency, and externalised thinking - with a practical teaching script too!

💡 The Big Idea

Handwriting is more than just neat work and tidy books. It’s a powerful tool for learning. In a world of touch screens and voice notes, it might feel like handwriting is losing its place. But research suggests that, especially in primary, it still has a big role to play.

When we teach handwriting explicitly, we’re building motor memory, supporting spelling and phonics, and strengthening the link between thinking and writing. Every letter they form is an act of sequencing and organisation.

As I’ve written before about organising and connecting knowledge, children think in the space around them. Handwriting is one of the most accessible forms of that extended mind: putting thoughts down in a stable, visible form so they can be checked, reshaped, and built on.

In fact, studies show that writing by hand can boost memory, reading fluency, and even conceptual understanding. It’s a physical act of learning.

Children also enjoy handwriting. It feels satisfying, it gives immediate visual feedback, and it’s something they can see themselves getting tangibly better at.

👀 A Closer Look

Handwriting, Memory and the Extended Mind

When children write by hand, they’re building a bridge between what lives in their head and what appears on the page in front of them.

In earlier posts, I’ve argued that we can support enhancing children’s working memory by extending their thinking through the use of the environment around them. Once pupils are reasonably fluent in transcription, writing becomes part of that extended mind. They can jot, cross out, list, draft and redraft. The page becomes a workspace for thought, not just a place to prove they’ve finished something.

If every letter is still an effort, that workspace is either restricted or non-existent. All their working memory is swallowed by the act of forming letters, leaving very little spare capacity for other thinking. But as the load of transcription is lightened, writing turns into a tool for extending thought.

This is exactly the point made in the DFE’s Writing Framework and the research on the simple view of writing: fluency in spelling and handwriting frees up working memory so that composition and other thinking can take centre stage.

Organising Knowledge

Zoom in and handwriting looks like strokes, joins and curves. Zoom out and it’s all about structure. Again, I’ve discussed structure, sequencing and organising ideas already.

At letter level, pupils are linking phonics knowledge to movement patterns. They learn that the sound /ai/ might be written as ai, ay, or a_e; that some letters regularly show up as neighbours in English (str, spr, thr), and that certain combinations almost never sit together. Seeing those patterns in script reinforces what they’ve met in their phonics sessions. A child writing train, rain, Spain, again in a line is rehearsing letter formation, joining and spelling patterns all at once.

At word level, handwriting helps children chunk language into meaningful units. Consistent spacing shows where one idea ends and the next begins. Correctly spelt high-frequency words like the, of, and, because start to “look right” in their joined form. Children also begin to notice that some words travel together (because of, in front of, as well as) and the way they space and group them on the page mirrors the structure of the sentence in their head.

By sentence and text level, writing is doing a lot of knowledge organising on their behalf. Paragraph breaks, new lines for dialogue, headings and subheadings all act as visual signals of how ideas are grouped and sequenced. When children learn to leave a gap before a new paragraph, to start speech on a new line, or to use a subheading to tidy up a page of notes, they’re learning how to structure thoughts so that it makes sense to themselves and the reader.

All of this loops straight back to my earlier posts on organising and connecting knowledge. How children place ideas on a page, word by word and line by line, is part of how they build and structure what they know.

Why Explicit Teaching and Modelling Matter

None of this will happen by accident. If we want handwriting to support memory and thinking, telling children to write neatly isn’t going to cut it. Children need to see the whole act of writing, not just the finished line on the page. That includes how you sit so writing feels comfortable, how you tilt the paper so your arm can glide, and where each letter starts and joins.

Digital tools like handwriting repeaters can help here. Pupils can watch a letter form again and again while they copy. But nothing really replaces seeing you write in real time. Under a visualiser, they see the full picture: how you sit in the chair, how the paper is angled (not straight at 90 degrees, but slightly tilted depending on whether you’re left- or right-handed), how one hand guides the page while the other writes, and how your pencil moves across the line.

Layering in a bit of thinking aloud helps too.

“I’m tilting my paper so my arm can move smoothly. Watch how my hand stays under the line so I don’t smudge it”

Research on explicit instruction and the simple view of writing all point in the same direction: children benefit from seeing the full process, slowly and repeatedly, not just being told to improve their handwriting.

So what might a handwriting lesson look like? The script below takes that idea and turns it into something practical – a short, repeatable routine you can use every day to teach posture, position, and letter formation explicitly, without it taking over the timetable.

✏️ A Daily Handwriting Routine (10–15 minutes)

You can drop this in once a day as a short, focused slot. The script is flexible, but hopefully, it shares some key ingredients for explicit handwriting teaching. Swap in whatever letters, joins, or patterns you’re working on.

1️⃣ Getting Ready to Write (30–60 seconds)

Start every session by resetting the writing position. Keep it quick and consistent so pupils internalise it.

“Before we write, check your writing body. Feet flat on the floor. Back straight against the chair. Paper slightly tilted. One hand writing, one hand guiding the paper. Pencil resting gently in your fingers. Show me you’re ready.”

As they do this, walk or scan the room and feedback small adjustments such as tilting a page, moving a chair in, or loosening a tight grip.