Cursive capital letters

Why capitals get their own sheet

Many cursive capitals look nothing like their print versions. A cursive Q resembles a number 2, and a cursive G, S and L begin with sweeping strokes that print letters never use. Small letters mostly follow a pattern, but capitals have to be learned one at a time. That is why this page prints capitals alone.

What prints

The title is "Cursive Capital Letters". The instruction under it has the student study the dark capital that opens each line, trace the grey ones, and always begin a letter at one fixed spot.

There are 26 ruled lines, A through Z, each with a single capital repeated across the width. The first copy is dark. The others are grey. Guides on each line: a top rule, a dashed rule and a baseline. Capitals reach the top line, while the dashed line marks small-letter height, which shows how much taller a capital stands.

This page opens on the Large line size, so about seven lines fit on a page and the alphabet runs to four pages. Lines on the last page that have no letter are left empty for writing the capital from memory.

Cedarville Cursive, drawn by Kimberly Geswein and licensed under the SIL Open Font License, supplies the capitals. It reads like a teacher's own handwriting and is not an official method, so check the capitals your school uses (Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian teach some of them differently).

The settings

• Practice. Set to "Letters A to Z" here.
• Letters. Set to "Capitals only". You can change it to "Capital and small (Aa)" or "Small letters only".
• Line size. Opens on "Large (beginners)". "Medium" and "Small (confident writers)" fit more lines on each page.

Using the pages

Introduce capitals in groups that start the same way. Students often find it easier to learn several letters that share a first stroke together, instead of A to Z in order. Have them say the stroke aloud as they trace: up, over, down, around.

Capitals are used less often than small letters, so tie them to something real: the first letter of a name, a street, a month, or the start of a sentence. The cursive name tracing sheet is useful here, because a name always begins with a capital.

For a quick look at all of them together, the cursive alphabet chart puts every pair on one page.

Worked example: capitals for a fourth-grade class

Ms. Torres teaches fourth grade and finds that several students write capitals in print even when the rest of a word is cursive. She leaves the settings as they open (Capitals only, Large) and prints four pages.

She hands out pages one and two first, covering A through N. Students trace for ten minutes at the start of class, three days a week. On the fourth day she asks them to write their own first and last names in cursive on a separate sheet and circle the capitals they are happiest with. Pages three and four, O through Z, follow the next week. By the end, she has a quick check of which capitals still need work: the ones students avoid.

A short closing note

Large lines let small hands move freely. Once the shapes feel steady, switch to Medium so the capitals fit the size of everyday writing.

Sources

1. Common Core State Standards: Language, Grade 1 (L.1.1.a, print all upper- and lowercase letters) thecorestandards.org
2. Reading Rockets: Writing readingrockets.org