I realise many schools have now broken up for the summer. But if you're a primary handwriting lead and would like to pause, reflect on the year and identify a few thoughts to carry into next term, you're very welcome to join me.

Here’s our Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82072007551

If I don't see you tomorrow, I wish you a wonderful summer bre…

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Many colleagues are already enjoying a well-earned summer break. Others have a few more weeks to go before classrooms fall quiet for a while.

And now it's time for Handwriting Matters to take a summer break too.

The Newsletter and Focus Posts will return towards the end of August, ready for a new school year and new opportunities to help children develop as confident, successful writers.

Over the summer, I’ll be continuing to work behind the scenes. There are resources to develop, recordings to organise and support to review — including the Better Handwritten Progression & Order of Teaching training, complete with weekly teaching plans. Summer offers the uninterrupted time these projects need.

If you’re new to Handwriting Matters, or if you’ve been reading along since the beginning, the summer might be a lovely opportunity to dip into the archive and revisit a few posts. There are articles exploring handwriting, movement, attention, memory, implementation and the fascinating process of learning to write.

And, after all… repetition rules ☺️

Sometimes returning to an idea allows us to notice something we missed the first time around.

Thank you for reading, messaging, sharing posts with colleagues and supporting this growing community over the last few months. It’s truly a privilege to work alongside educators who care so deeply about helping children.

Whether you’re spending the summer travelling, reading, walking the dog, catching up with family, tackling long-postponed projects or simply enjoying a slower pace of life, I hope you find opportunities to rest, recharge and notice the things that matter.

Have a wonderful summer.

See you towards the end of August.

Nicky 😊

o is a c-based letter.

We change c into o.

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We laid the foundations for how to help by first taking time to understand the problem.

Now we can employ solutions that ensure psychological safety — and that is essential.

Faced with evidence produced by an individual’s hand, judgement is perhaps our most automatic response.

Judgement about ability.
About effort.
About care.

There’s a difference between judgement and comparison.

Judgement is subjective and personal — an opinion.

You’re trying hard. You’re not trying.
You’re taking care. You’re being careless.
You take pride in your work. You can’t be bothered.
You listened carefully. You didn’t listen to me.

Comparison is objective — interested and curious.

Do you see you’ve used h here and H there. I think you may have used capital H because… What do you think?

Using capital letters incorrectly is no-one’s fault.
It isn’t something to blame.
It’s something to understand.
We accept what is.

Then our work is to bring clarity and build simple systems that support understanding and correct automation.

So — the teaching process is simple:

• focus attention & raise awareness

• provide frequent opportunities to practise and reflect

• support transfer to all writing

Focus attention & raise awareness

— explain the problem
— use your knowledge

Children are far more likely to change something they understand than something they are simply told is wrong.

— show examples
— check they are seeing what you see, understand what needs to be different and why
— enjoy being curious together

Practise and reflect

Plan ‘little and often’ activities.

An example:
— present a short sentence with incorrect capital letters (that mirror use by the child eg at the beginning of most words within a sentence)
— the child corrects on the sheet
— the child writes out the sentence — one sentence only
— the child self-checks
— a peer checks
— an adult checks
— repeat daily/twice a day until correct use is consistent

Build the system. Notice what happens. Refine it. Repeat.

Support transfer

Another system.

An example:
— the child articulates target to peer partner before writing (all subjects)
— pauses soon after starting to reflect on capital use
— ticks one example of correct use / corrects any errors so far
— continues writing
— on finishing, looks back, finds one word with incorrect use (if any) then writes correctly

The strategy is to frequently grab moments to focus attention, raise awareness, practise and reflect. Over time, these moments become habits, and those habits become automatic across all writing.

It will take as long as it takes. And that’s perfectly normal.

The important thing is not to search for the perfect activity, but to build a simple system that repeatedly draws attention to the target, provides opportunities to practise and supports reflection.

Start simple.
Notice what happens.
Refine the system.
Repeat.

The aim isn’t perfection.

The aim is to strengthen a new pathway until it becomes the pathway the unconscious mind selects automatically.

Peer support is both invaluable and empowering.

It isn’t realistic for a teacher to give personal attention to 30+ pupils all of the time, but it is possible to teach children to support each other.

Training children to become Handwriting Helpers nurtures values of leadership, collaboration, community and connection.

With handwriting, where the steps to change are necessarily small and focused, every child can be both a learner and a helper over the course of a school year.

Invitation:

Think about the system you use when leaving the house with everything you need.

Notice each step.

Is the system working well, or could refining it improve the outcome?

Now repeat the process for one system you have in place in your classroom or school.

Next term in Handwriting Matters ✍🏼:
We'll continue noticing, learning and refining together 😊

Head of the family.

Well in the Better Handwritten formation groups, head of two families…

c-based letters

and c-related letters

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“What I don’t understand,” said David, “is why I keep putting capital letters in the middle of words without realising.”

“That just shows your unconscious mind is taking over,” I reflected. “Your conscious mind is busy focusing on what you want to write and how to spell the words.”

I’ve chatted with David about his learning experiences many times. He’s in his early sixties now and believes he is likely dyslexic — he went to school when little was understood about what that meant and how to support.

Instead, he was labelled lazy, sat at the back of the class, and left school only able to write his name.

When we talk about it now, I can see that David is disappointed the education system let him down. And still hurt that he was judged so negatively and harshly.

But, David says, he’s had a great life, has never been out of work and — tending to gardens — being outside and connected to nature every day has gifted him with contentment and the power of noticing. He’s an observer, a story-teller, a conversationalist — and has a wealth of practical skills and knowledge.

But I also know that many aren’t as fortunate as David.

Along the way, he encountered people who recognised his strengths, valued what he could do and wanted him to succeed. One of them was a retired school teacher he’d done some work for.

Not everyone finds such support. And the consequences of struggling with literacy can be profound and lifelong.

David was in his fifties when that retired teacher realised he couldn’t read or write. She negotiated with him to work with her for a short while each day when he finished work. (He said it was a non-negotiable negotiation 😂)

And gradually he has developed his skills. But reading and writing still take a great deal of effort. It is cognitively demanding and he describes how he dreads receiving Christmas cards because it is such a challenge to reciprocate. He knows how long writing a single card will take him and that those pesky capital letters will creep in while his attention is focused on organising the sequence of letters within a word.

Capital letters are sometimes taught to young children before lowercase.

From what I’ve seen, this appears to be a common historical practice in some countries. Indeed, some early reading books present text entirely in uppercase to support this approach.

Also, parents helping their children learn to write before they start school may teach them capital formations.

The reasoning seems based on the premise that capital letters are easier to write.

Many have straight lines.
And where there are curves they have more space to move.
The letters are larger.
We construct many capital letters, lifting the pen and building the formation by connecting separate strokes.
The transitions provide pause points.
And actually later — when writing a capital letter at the start of a sentence or to begin a proper noun — those tiny pause points are welcome movement shifts for the hand, much like the small adjustments we naturally make to our body position when sitting for a length of time.

So I completely understand the logic. David has early memories of writing capital letters over and over when he was first at school.

However.

Through years of observation, reflection and learning, I’ve come to favour teaching lowercase letters first.

It supports phonics teaching.

And yes, the movements may be more challenging initially, but with effective teaching and consistent practice, the motor programmes will develop. Then writing becomes easier because these are the formations most needed.

Remember, there will always be struggles. This early process of struggle lays down neural networks that help the brain work through future challenges.

Our brains are pattern seekers. Once a pattern is picked up, through repetition it becomes automated — placed under the command of the unconscious mind, freeing up the conscious mind (with its significant limitations) to focus attention on the most pressing demand in the moment.

The brain connects information to form neural pathways. Repetition sees those pathways strengthen. When attention is elsewhere, the brain tends to default to the most established pathway.

When David is writing and his conscious mind is dealing with spelling, his unconscious mind selects the capital representation of some letters because that pathway is the clearest one associated with that letter.

And this is one reason we see children include capitals within their writing.

It’s evidence of the strongest neural pathway connected to that letter at this point.

Interestingly, this is something I mostly encounter with younger writers — a stage of their developmental progression.

I suspect one reason I don’t see it more often is that children are taught lowercase letters first in the schools I’ve worked with, and begin learning joins around age 7—8. Once letters become part of a connected movement sequence, capital formations are less likely to emerge within words.

There are other possible explanations for misplacement of capital letters.

Sometimes the child appears to understand that capitals often appear at beginnings but hasn’t yet securely automated when capitals should be used.

Sometimes children don’t realise their letter formation is presenting as a capital letter. This is particularly common with letters such as p and s, where a child may intend to write a lowercase letter but actually produce P or S.

Chatting with the child can help reveal their perspective and distinguish the perception behind the formations.

Whatever the reason, it is not that they were being lazy or not trying.

Their conscious attention was busy dealing with another component of writing.

Capital letters in the middle of a sentence are simply a clue that their attention was needed elsewhere.

And this is why I believe it’s more helpful to teach lowercase first.
Because that is what is most useful for writing.
We want the motor programmes for the most commonly needed letter representations automated first. Then we can introduce the corresponding capitals with their separate movement sequences.

I was reading a really interesting article about Ghana international Antoine Semenyo, who is part of the team that held England to a 0–0 draw in the World Cup earlier this week.

‘It should be little surprise Semenyo is now so adept with both his right and left feet given his father…encouraged him from a young age to kick “paper, a can, anything” with both feet. By the age of six it came naturally to Semenyo…’

What we teach early matters.

With repetition it becomes automatic.

The pathways established in those first years can support us for life — or, as David's story reminds us, remain obstacles that take decades to overcome.

This is why The Writing Framework places such emphasis on teaching handwriting from Reception.

Next time, we'll think about what we can do when those capital letters are present in places they shouldn’t be.

Sincere thanks to David for permission to share his story.

Invitation:

Write the numbers one to ten in words, remembering to write every e as E. Next write your own sentence, again replacing e with E.

Notice:

a) whether you manage to do it EvEry timE

b) how odd and unfamiliar it looks.

This is a hint of the experience for a child working to change an established formation.

Next time in Handwriting Matters ✍🏼:
Part 2 — How to help change established formations.

Here’s the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89097756225

Two notebooks will be helpful — a general one and a dedicated Handwriting Journal.

Don’t worry if you can’t attend live, all the recordings from this first cycle will be available soon.

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Because it takes more effort than many other letters.
More effort to write.
More effort to teach.
There’s often more struggle to support.

But actually, I don’t really mind that sinking feeling.
I’ve met it many times 😂
I know it will pass, swept aside by the sense of achievement that’…

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It’s a recurring pattern in many of the handwriting samples I’ve studied over the years and I still remember nagging children about it when I was teaching Year 3.

I didn’t understand then what I do now.
My evidence base was more limited.
And I was too busy to find space to think much about it.
I would bring it to the child’s attention… again and again and again!

Pointing it out and then expecting change is rarely enough.

Focusing attention repeatedly and deliberately on handwriting over recent years has allowed me to notice patterns across thousands of samples.

And I’ve created space to think more deeply.

The recurring issue of margin drift I saw for many children — especially younger writers — made me ask, What’s going on here?

To help we need to:

• understand the problem

• explain the problem to children

• provide opportunities, activities, strategies and support to facilitate change

Understanding the problem

Early writers may not notice the margin, understand its purpose or know how to position their writing in relation to it.

They may not understand positional language such as in the margin or next to the margin.

Their attention is often switching between the many cognitive demands involved in organising thinking and writing.

The margin is obvious to us as adult experienced writers.
We use it unconsciously.
We’ve become experts and forgotten what it was like to not know.
And so we may forget to explain patiently and explicitly, to point out details, show examples and check children have understood.

Explicit instruction should always be a conversation.
Telling isn’t enough.
We need to ask questions, invite questions — create space for noticing, reflection, trying out, feedback and adjustment.

Wondering about what was going on somehow led me to a fascinating article on Information Theory which gave me a light bulb moment of understanding about why margin drift happens.

Stay with me here. It’s a little mind-blowing… but fascinating.

One commonly cited estimate suggests the human body sends over 11 million bits of information to the brain per second. But — only around 50 bits per second can be processed consciously.

In the context of this understanding it’s not surprising that some children don’t process the margin line on a page consciously.

Attention is under pressure, switching between thoughts and juggling the complexities of anchoring them to the page — the seats in the auditorium of conscious thinking are full.

So the unconscious mind takes the reins.
And for some children, rather than noticing that faint vertical guide line, the brain uses the first word on the line above as a marker.

It makes sense doesn’t it?
Write under that first word on each line and your writing should proceed in a nice straight format down the page.

The problem is… visual perception.

Depending on our personal perception, affected by paper angle and distance, we can think our writing is straight, until a point when we pause, refocus and notice the dreaded drift.

I experience this myself sometimes when I write practice sheets, spacing examples at intervals.

It’s one of the benefits of my decision to handwrite practices. I get to feel and notice details that support effective teaching.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to re-write practices because — when I straightened the page — I found my writing had drifted right slightly. Even though it had felt in line as I wrote.

Once I understood this I developed a strategy of pulling left slightly. It still feels a bit ‘wrong’ when writing but, when I straighten the page, examples line up nicely.

I’m also aware my perception is different for the lower half of the page compared to the top.

So I get it.
I’ve experienced for myself what’s happening for some children.

Information Theory helped me make sense of this and interest has made me alert to other situations where visual perception affects situations…

I’m enjoying the World Cup at the moment.

While I was watching Qatar play Switzerland, a controversial penalty was awarded.
Was Switzerland’s Remo Freuler offside before he was brought down by Qatar goalkeeper Mahmoud Anunada?
The controversy wasn’t only about the decision but about the reliability of the video assisted technology (VAR).

Awareness of visual perception is ultimately what led to the introduction of VAR.
The referee makes decisions based on perception in the moment, but this is impacted by position, distance, motion and lighting, as well as numerous distractions in the immediate environment, not to mention heightened emotions.

VAR is designed to assess the facts from different perspectives and combine the information to support more accurate, evidence-based decision making.

Whether you think it’s a good thing or not, it’s a reminder that we see things differently, and that when a child’s writing drifts from the margin, it’s not because they are being careless.
It’s evidence that their conscious attention is at capacity and they haven’t yet automated use of the margin.

How can we help?

First, explain the problem to children.
Don’t just nag like I used to before I knew better.
It doesn’t help and is a form of judgement.
It’s likely to make a child feel we think they’re not trying, when in reality this is simply a problem they haven’t learned to resolve yet.

Replace judgement with interest and curiosity.

“Do you see how your writing is drifting away from the margin? Let me tell you why that happens…”

Then it’s about providing strategies and practice opportunities to bring the margin into conscious thinking — until perception and action recalibrate, and use becomes automatic and natural.

Here are a few ideas I’ve found helpful to raise awareness and for practice:

• Write I am writing next to the margin.
  One word per line, starting next to the margin…

• Play ‘The Margin Game’
  Write one word, then two, then three, then four, then a sentence.
  Three or four lines in each set.
  The challenge is to remember to start next to the margin when moving to a new line.
  Three-letter words are ideal so there’s not too much load.
  The more words, the more likely it is that attention will drift, so the gradual volume increase helps us see what happens when it does.
  Is the unconscious now using the margin as intended or are more practice activities needed?

• Play ‘Spot the Difference’.

  This is basically modelling.
  Show two examples: one with writing next to the margin, one with writing drifting.
  Raising awareness in simple ways can be a powerful catalyst for change.

• Assign a Handwriting Helper to provide supportive prompts.
  A peer who uses the margin effectively, who sits in close proximity and who can remind, encourage and praise during writing activities. Until that’s no longer needed.

It’s all about understanding and awareness.

The margin is not invisible.
The child is not being difficult.
We simply need to learn how to notice what they are noticing—and what they are not.

Invitation: What examples can you think of where two people looking at the same thing see it differently?

Next time in Handwriting Matters ✍🏼:
Teacher Question — How do I stop children using capitals in the middle of words and sentences?

Tomorrow’s Focus Post for paid subscribers and School Implementation Partners explores forming looped k.

Here’s the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85402640962

Two notebooks will be helpful — a general one and a dedicated Handwriting Journal.

Don’t worry if you can’t attend live, all the recordings from this first cycle will be available soon.

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I refer to them as k (or straight k) and looped k.

In this Focus Post we'll concentrate on straight k.

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Proprioception: awareness of the body in space and movement, often without needing to think about it consciously.

My son’s cat — Calypso — sometimes comes to stay when he’s away for work.

Calypso loves to drink from a running tap.

And I love watching her prepare to jump up onto the rim of the sink.
I see her scanning the space above.
Staring intently.
Shuffling and reorganising her body into position for launch.
Assessing.
Decisive.
Fearless.
And then she’s there — on the edge — as if by magic.

I can never quite catch the movement.
It’s over almost before it begins.
In the blink of an eye.

Someone has managed to capture the essence of movement I struggle to keep up with.

Someone extremely talented, with a gift as much for noticing as for his creative expression…

Shou Xin

I came across his work through people sharing it on Substack.

And I find it absolutely captivating.

Working with charcoal pencils, an eraser and minimal strokes, he somehow manages to capture the trace of movement that announces itself simply and defiantly as CAT.

Yes. I am cat.

Shou Xin anchors the memory of movement.

And this is what handwriting does too.

It is the trace of the hand’s movement across the page.
Captured, as a photograph freezes people and the living world in a still image.

And in that, there is power.
There is identity.
Communication.
Expression.
Energy.
Connection.
Legacy.

And there is the key that unlocks the teaching of handwriting — hidden in plain sight:

Seeing the movement behind the mark.

Invitation: Can you follow the movement pathway here?

Next time in Handwriting Matters ✍🏼:
Teacher Question — What can I do to help children start at the margin?

Tomorrow’s Focus Post for paid subscribers and School Implementation Partners explores forming the letter k.

I’m really looking forward to presenting at this fantastic conference for the fourth time — and attending sessions too.

It sounds like most of the 2500 places have now been taken up by colleagues in California but all are welcome if there’s space.

Recordings will be available until 20th July so you can enjoy at a time and pace that work for you — you just need to register.

I’d love to welcome you to my session: Handwriting and Literacy ✍🏼
10am USA / 6pm UK

All good wishes,

Nicky

Earlier this week I was in Liverpool for the National Handwriting Association’s Handwriting Symposium.

I’m looking forward to seeing you later and sharing my secondary-focused reflections from the day.

Here’s our link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81938649315

Remember your general notebook, Handwriting Journal and a cuppa 🙂

Don’t worry if you can’t att…

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I’m at the National Handwriting Association’s Handwriting Symposium today, where Dr Tim Mills — lead author of The Writing Framework — is speaking.

I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow and sharing some reflections from the day.

Here’s our Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85139794764

Remember your general notebook, Handwriting Journal and a …

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It starts just under the line above, travels straight down to bump the bottom line, then retraces upwards before curving right and continuing round to meet the stem back at the bottom line.

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My daughter was coming to the end of her third year at university and I was aware she was spending at least as much time working cleaning shifts and bar jobs as she was studying.

I wanted her to have enough energy to really focus during her final year, so a plan formed. I would cover what she had been earning by looking after dogs. It wouldn’t interfere with my Better Handwritten work and Poppy (my lovely labrador) has always been great with visitors — canine, feline or human!

So that was that.

Before long I had to close my books because returning visitors meant I’d reached capacity.

It’s three years since my daughter graduated now and I still look after the dogs — because I love it (and love them).

Being with them has taught me so much…

About Headspace

Dogs need their walks — whatever the weather — and it turns out… so do I.
Once they’ve had a decent walk — and breakfast — they will happily sleep.
When they sleep I work.
And I’ve discovered that work flows more easily after walking.

Sometimes I don’t think much at all. I am in the moment.
Noticing.
Experiencing.
Droplets of water.
The texture of a tree trunk.
A bird surfing the breeze.

Other times I think a lot.
Ideas surface.
Things click into place.
They reorganise themselves.
I don’t force anything. It just seems to unfold.

In fact, I now see walking as an essential part of my work process.
Some of my best thinking happens with a lead in my hand and a dog trotting ahead.

About Proprioception

Walking, and watching the dogs, has made me more aware of proprioception — mine and theirs.

Proprioception: our awareness of the body in space and movement, often without needing to think about it consciously.

Sometimes I’m lost in thought and stumble, my toes catching a tree root.
If the ground had been flat that wouldn’t have happened — awareness of moving my feet doesn’t require me to look down.
But an obstacle can literally trip me up.

Dogs, with four legs to support their balance, have an amazingly intuitive sense of their bodies in space. They can leap ditches, skim through fencing (even through barbed wire — which makes my skin prickle) and deftly dodge each other while playing.

Soomin the whippet is the fastest dog I know.
One moment she is tearing round in an arc; the next, she stops dead in her tracks by my feet.
When I watch her run and dodge I wonder if this was how someone came up with the idea for the game of rugby…

About Neural Pathways and Automaticity

My understanding of neural pathways has developed from many different sources, but I remember walking with the dogs one time after watching an animation from Sentis and recognising that the paths we follow through fields and woods are a wonderful analogy for how neural pathways form and strengthen.

Through repetition the pathway becomes easier to travel. The clearest pathways are the ones that have been trodden many times. I follow them — my attention free to focus internally on thoughts, or externally on the dogs and the environment.

I also notice a tendency to walk familiar routes in the same direction. It feels a bit strange to go the other way round (although occasionally I choose to do that anyway).
Automaticity ‘is in the building’ — or perhaps more accurately, out in the woods.

Actually, it’s everywhere.

I understand why it feels strange to change an automated letter formation. To go another way round.

About Attention Awareness

This I love.
Observing where my attention is.
Without judgement. Just with interest.

There’s a tree on our route. A particular tree.
And I’ve made it a habit to notice whether I see it or not.
The tree is always there of course, but my attention may be somewhere else.

When I notice myself noticing it, I play Zoom In (this is now an activity in my teacher Zoom sessions).
I look with intention and see what I see.
Then I move closer and look again, noticing what I see now that I hadn’t a few moments before.
I move in again, and then again until my nose is almost touching the moss that covers much of the trunk.

Once — during a particularly wet spell — tiny fungi emerged before my eyes.
They had been there all the time.
I just hadn’t noticed them.
I could easily have missed them and would never have known.
Now I will never forget them.

This process feels important for teaching handwriting.
At first glance we take in only an overall impression.
But when we look more closely, and then more closely again, details reveal themselves.
Those details help us understand how the pen or pencil moved.
They help us decide what to teach.
They help children learn to see too.

About Leadership

As pack leader, my job is to make the dogs feel safe.

When they feel safe they settle.
They explore.
They play.
They learn.
They trust me to make good decisions and follow my lead.

That trust builds over time through consistency, care and connection.
The parallels with our work in schools are clear.

Teachers with their students.
School leaders with their colleagues.
My work supporting them.

And it’s what I love to do.
Work in collaboration to help handwriting leads feel confident — developing understanding and clarity with staff so they can pay it forward to children.

I started looking after dogs to help my daughter through her final year at university.
Four years later, I’m still doing it.
Because I love the dogs.
But also because, without realising it, they’ve become some of my most patient teachers.

I’ve learned a great deal from being with them.

Invitation: What activities give you space to see and think more deeply?

Next time in Handwriting Matters ✍🏼 : Learning from cats

Tomorrow’s Focus Post for paid subscribers and School Implementation Partners explores the letter b.

It starts just under the line above, travels straight down to bump the bottom line, then retraces upwards before curving right.

The top of the curve is about halfway between the lines.

The curve then moves straight down, ending in a small exit curve to the right.

Read more

Whether you’ve been quietly following along, reflecting on your own practice, experimenting with ideas in the classroom, or joining the live sessions — thank you for being here.

I’ll be taking a short break over half term, and am looking forward to returning in June with more reflections, practical ideas and conversations about handwriting, movement, learning and teaching.

Until then, I hope you’re able to find a little space to rest and reset too.

Nicky

Before that — honestly — I had, to all intents and purposes, averted my eyes and ignored it.

Just cars driving very fast round and round a track. Not my thing.

Now — I’m actually glad my viewpoint was so limited.
Because it’s made discovery all the more illuminating.
Like peering into a rock pool and suddenly seeing what you hadn’t moments before, hidden beneath the mirror of the water’s surface.
That internal gasp of excitement as a crab’s pincer edges into view…

I love that experience. When I witness a shift in my own perception.

The first event was a trip to California in 2019 to stay with good friends — Ian and Jess.

So it was special anyway, but very early one morning — because of the time difference — I watched my first ever Grand Prix.

If I’d watched it alone, nothing much would have changed.
But I watched with Ian.

Ian is a super smart guy and has been an F1 fan for years and years, committed to watching every event on TV and attending race weekends in person many times.

As we watched, he patiently began to explain things to me.
Tyre types and the colours that identify them.
DRS.
The teams.
The drivers.
The impact of changing weather conditions.

His knowledge was — and is — incredible.
And just like that, I was hooked.
As much by his passion for the sport as the insights he shared.

And the science.
The psychology.
The strategy.
The teamwork.
The commitment.
The marketing and economics.

All fascinating…

The second event was moving house — moving to a new location.

And that saw me living near family — my brother, sister in law and two nephews.

All Formula 1 fans.
All able to continue explaining and educating me.
Helping me see and understand.
Patiently. Repeating what I couldn’t remember or get my head around.
And now I was benefitting from more regular viewing, heading to watch as many races as possible with them.
Fun family time — building connection through sport. 🏎️ 🏁 😊

Now I can’t pretend I kept up my studies in understanding F1 strategy and technical details. I still enjoy adding bits to that when I can.

But my personal learning journey has continued — thinking deeply about how F1 connects to handwriting. And there are many strands to that.

Today, we’ll consider proprioception and automaticity.

Proprioception: our awareness of the body in space and movement, often without needing to think about it consciously.

Automaticity: when a skill becomes so well practised that attention can focus on higher-level thinking rather than the mechanics themselves.

Formula 1 drivers are highly skilled.

For our entertainment and their personal drive — pushing their limits to perform at the highest level of the sport — they have committed their lives to building skills that appear effortless but depend on years of embodied repetition and sensory refinement.

They’re not just ‘fast drivers’.
They’re people who have spent years building spatial awareness, reaction systems and sensory precision under extreme pressure.

Many drivers are still incredibly young when they reach Formula 1, having worked their way up the ranks. Which tells us that the journey developing those skills began in childhood.

Movement becoming so automated that conscious attention can be used elsewhere.

Just like handwriting.

F1 drivers develop deeply internalised movement patterns. Their sense of their body in space is highly tuned. And more than that… it extends to an intimate awareness of their car. The car becomes an extension of body — they integrate to perform as one.

Movement must be judged within impossibly small margins, with split-second adjustments made that rely on extreme spatial awareness.

And modern Formula 1 steering wheels are astonishingly complex.

The function and sensitivity of buttons, rotary dials and switches must be deeply understood. Displays, communication systems and race settings need to be operated and interpreted.

And all of this at extreme speed, under physical strain, while cornering and without looking down.

That’s extraordinary embodied learning.

Movements become automated and internalised.

The driver’s hands learn where controls are, how they feel, how much pressure is needed and when adjustments are required — without conscious visual searching.

The humble pencil or pen won’t be regarded as sophisticated technology compared to a multi-million-pound Formula 1 car — but technology it is. And just as an F1 race car becomes an extension of the driver’s body, we might view the pen as an extension of the writer’s hand.

Fluent handwriting similarly depends on tactile feedback, pressure awareness, movement pathways becoming internalised, and reduced visual dependence.

When that happens, over time — with repetition and growing proprioceptive awareness — movements become more automatic, attention can shift elsewhere and the body begins to ‘know’ what to do.

It’s exactly the same underlying human process — just a completely different domain.

‘Teachers should plan for regular teaching and practice (many schools do this daily) so that correct letter formation becomes automatic, efficient and fluent over time.’

The Writing Framework, p24

Things that look effortless are rarely built effortlessly.

I’m grateful to Ian and my family for helping me see the magic in something I hadn’t before.

And remind myself that this is my commitment — helping others see the magic in handwriting.

Invitation: What feels magical to you now that you understand it more deeply than you did at the start?

Next time in Handwriting Matters ✍🏼: Learning from being with dogs

Tomorrow’s Focus Post for paid subscribers and School Implementation Partners explores forming the letter h.