How to teach letter formation, including NZ and Australian styles

By Colouring Nest · Published 28 October 2026 · Sources checked 28 October 2026

Teach letter formation as a movement, not a shape to copy: show where each letter starts and which way the pencil travels, group letters that share a movement, start with lowercase, and watch children write for 10 to 15 minutes a day so mistakes are caught before they become habits. New Zealand and the Australian states use slightly different letter models, but the starting points and directions are nearly the same, so good habits carry across.

Why movement matters more than neat shapes

New Zealand's Ministry of Education puts it plainly in its Teaching Handwriting guidance: teachers should focus on how the pencil moves to make each letter rather than on exact copies of a model alphabet, because a printed sample can show a shape but can't show a movement. A letter that looks right can still be made the wrong way, and a wrong movement slows children down later, especially when they start joining letters. The same guidance warns that marking work after a lesson isn't enough when children are first learning, because you can't see how the letter was formed.

Before letters: grip, posture and paper

Posture. Feet on the floor, writing arm resting on the table, the other hand holding the paper, shoulders relaxed.
Grip. A tripod grip: pencil between thumb and forefinger, resting on the middle finger. The Ministry suggests holding it about 3 cm from the tip, and a little further back for left-handers so they can see their writing.
Paper. Right-handers tilt the page slightly anticlockwise. Left-handers tilt it clockwise, more steeply, with the arm below the line of writing, which helps avoid the hooked wrist.
Warm-ups. For children who have hardly used a pencil, play dough, pegs, drawing big circles and zigzags build the control letters need.

Teach letters in families

Grouping letters by their first movement means each new letter reuses one the child already knows. New Zealand's guidance suggests three groups for the first months of school:

Anticlockwise curve start: c, a, d, g, q, o, e, s, f. Start just below the top, curve back to the left and around.
Straight down start: l, t, i, j, r, n, m, p, h, b, k, y, u. Start at the top and pull straight down.
Slants: v, w, x, z.

Australian state guidance groups letters in a similar way, so the families still work if your school uses a state style.

How to teach one letter, step by step

Model it big. Write the letter large on a whiteboard while saying the movement: "start at the top, straight down, back up and over" for n.
Air and finger. The child draws it in the air, then with a finger on the table or in sand, saying the same words.
Trace with a start dot. A green dot shows where to begin and an arrow shows the direction.
Copy, then write from memory. Move off tracing quickly. In the Indiana University study by James and Engelhardt (2012), children who printed letters freely later showed brain activity linked to reading when they saw those letters; children who only traced or typed them did not.
Use it in a word. Write a short word with the letter so the movement joins up with reading and spelling.
Watch, then praise the movement. "You started at the top" is more useful feedback than "neat".

New Zealand's Tāhūrangi handwriting page says 10 to 15 minutes of focused teaching a day can make a significant difference.

Lowercase first, then capitals

Most of what children read and write is lowercase, so it comes first. New Zealand's guidance makes lowercase letters the priority for the first six months of school, introduces all letters and the numerals 0 to 9 during the first year, and adds uppercase once lowercase is learned. A child who writes their name in capitals is very common; gently teach the lowercase version once they start school.

Fixing b and d reversals

Letter families solve the most common reversal. In the NZ grouping, d starts like c (an anticlockwise curve, then the tall stick), while b starts with a straight line down from the top, then the bump. If a child begins d by writing c first, they can't make it backwards. Say "c, then up and down" for d, and "down, up and round" for b, every time.

New Zealand and Australian handwriting styles

New Zealand uses one basic script in all schools, described in the Ministry's guidance, with an optional cursive later. The Ministry has also published free Playwrite NZ fonts for teaching.

Australia has a national expectation and state styles. The curriculum asks Year 2 students to write words in consistently legible unjoined letters. Each state and territory chooses a model: New South Wales uses NSW Foundation Style (with pre-cursive and cursive forms, as in the NSW Stage 2 sequence); Tasmania describes a beginners' alphabet that later gains exit strokes for cursive in its Handwriting Guidelines; Victoria, Queensland and South Australia have their own models.

The differences are mostly in slope and exit strokes: some state models give letters a small flick at the end from the start, while NZ basic script stays upright and plain. Starting points and directions rarely differ. Our NZ and Australian charts are drawn with the free Playwrite fonts, which are modelled on each style. They are not official school documents, so if your school issues its own chart, use that.

Questions people ask

What letters should be taught first in handwriting?

Lowercase letters, in groups that share a starting movement. Many teachers start with c, a, d, g and o (the anticlockwise curve letters), or with simple straight-down letters such as l, t and i. Introduce capitals once lowercase is secure.

How do you teach letter formation to preschoolers?

Keep it physical and short: big movements in the air, in sand or with paint, then tracing from a start dot. Name the movement each time. Most four-year-olds are ready for a few letters, such as those in their name, rather than the whole alphabet.

What is the NZ handwriting style?

New Zealand schools use the basic script in the Ministry of Education’s Teaching Handwriting guidance: upright, simple letters taught by movement, with optional cursive from about Year 5. The Ministry’s Playwrite NZ fonts show the letter shapes.

Why does my child write letters backwards?

Reversals such as b and d are common in the first years of school. Teaching letters by their starting movement, rather than by their shape, usually fixes them, because the movement is different even when the shapes are mirror images.