How it works
- Type your text, one word or sentence per line.
- Choose print or cursive, and the line size for your grade.
- Pick the rows: trace then write, trace only, or copy from a model.
- Download the PDF. Longer lists carry on over as many pages as they need.
Print first, then cursive
Most Canadian children learn to print in Kindergarten and Grade 1, and many classes start cursive around Grade 2 or 3. Tracing a model and then writing it on their own, a little every day, builds the letter shapes first and the speed later.
Ideas for your own text
This week’s spelling words
Writing spelling words by hand helps them stick. For the full set of activities, use the spelling worksheet maker.
French immersion
Type the week’s French words or a short dictée sentence; accents are drawn in every style.
Provincial curriculum links
- BC Grade 1–2Legible printing with spaces between letters and words.
- BC Grade 3Legible handwriting, with no particular style named.
- ON Grade 3+Cursive writing is an expectation again in the Language curriculum (2023), from Grade 3.
Most Canadian classes print in Grades 1 and 2 and add cursive later. In BC the curriculum asks for legible handwriting without naming cursive, so whether and when to teach it is decided by the school or the teacher. In Ontario, cursive is back as a Grade 3 expectation.
Slanted print makes a good bridge between the two: the letters already lean like cursive, so the move to joined letters is smaller. Try a week of slanted print with the class’s spelling words before switching the style to cursive.
Summarized in our own words from BC English Language Arts (Grades 1–3) and The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language (2023).
