Cursive writing practice sheets

What prints

The title is "Cursive Sentences". The instruction asks students to trace each grey line in one smooth movement, joining the letters without lifting the pencil, and then write it on the line below.

Each sentence takes two ruled lines. The first holds the sentence in light grey, written once across the line and sized to fit the width. There is no dark copy to start; the whole sentence is for tracing. Directly beneath it sits an empty line of the same size. The ruling is the same throughout: top rule, dashed rule at small-letter height, baseline.

With the box empty, the sheet prints six sample sentences: "I can write in cursive.", "The sun is warm today.", "My cat likes to nap.", "We read a good book.", "Practice makes progress." and "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The last uses every letter of the alphabet. At the small size, thirteen lines fit on a page, so the six sentences fill one page. At medium or large they spill onto a second page.

If a sentence is wider than the line, the writing is shrunk to fit, so a long sentence will print smaller than a short one on the same sheet. For the sizes to match, keep your sentences to about the same length.

The sentences are set in Kimberly Geswein's Cedarville Cursive, available under the SIL Open Font License. This is natural teacher-style handwriting, not an official method, and some schools (Zaner-Bloser, D'Nealian) teach slightly different capitals.

The settings

• Practice. Opens on "Sentences".
• Your words or sentences, one per line. Up to 400 characters. Each line becomes one traced sentence. Empty means the six samples.
• Line size. Opens on "Small (confident writers)". "Medium" and "Large (beginners)" are available when a student needs more room.

How to use the pages

Read the sentence aloud before tracing, so the student writes a thought rather than a string of shapes. Watch spacing between words: a gap about the width of a small letter is a good guide.

Handwriting and typing both matter. Writing standards for third grade also ask students to use keyboarding skills to produce writing, so cursive sits beside typing as one of several ways to put words on a page. The sheets here are for building speed and comfort with the pen.

Use a short quote, a line from a book, or a classroom rule as your own text. Pair the pages with the cursive words worksheets to move from single words to sentences, and with the lowercase cursive letters when a letter needs a refresher.

Worked example: a note to Grandma

Nora, eleven, wants to write a thank-you note in cursive. Her mother types two lines into the box: "Thank you for the sweater." and "I wore it to school today." She leaves Small selected.

The sheet prints each sentence in grey with a blank line below. Nora traces the first, writes it again, and then does the same with the second. She notices that the "y" in "today" breaks her flow, so she looks at cursive y for a minute. Then she copies the two sentences onto the card. Nothing she typed was sent anywhere by the page.

Last note

A single page of careful sentences is worth more than several rushed ones.

Sources

1. Common Core State Standards: Writing, Grade 3 (W.3.6, keyboarding skills) thecorestandards.org
2. Reading Rockets: Writing readingrockets.org