Timed Alphabet Handwriting Task

Improve student letter-formation fluency

Apr 18, 2025

Can your students write the 26 alphabet letters from a to z in less than 60 seconds?

When students are in the early stages of learning to read and write, it is normal that they form individual letters slowly and with great effort. However, in order to become proficient readers and writers, students will need to improve their letter formation skills to the point of automaticity. The Timed Alphabet Handwriting Task can help.

I learned about this intervention technique from Dr. Svetlana Cvetkovic’s session at the Accelerate Literacy Summit in 2024*, and adapted it for use with an adult emergent reader student. Here’s the story:

I had been providing intensive tutoring to an adult English learner for several months with the goal of helping her to be able to pass the writing portion of the United States Citizenship test. This student is a woman in her 40s whose home language is Arabic.

Despite regularly giving mini-lessons on letter formation of individual letters that were tricky for her, slow and effortful handwriting seemed to be interfering with her ability to recognize and remember spelling patterns. It seemed that so much of her working memory was dedicated to letter formation, it was getting in the way of learning to spell the words on the List of Writing Vocabulary for the Naturalization Test.

Here’s a photo of her handwriting before starting this project:

Based on the intervention described in Dr. Cvetovic’s session, I decided to have this student work toward to the goal of writing the complete alphabet in less than 60 seconds. We spent about 5 minutes at the beginning of each lesson working up to this goal. For this student, reaching the goal took about 38 sessions spread over 3 months (5 minutes x 38 sessions = a little over 3 hours of explicit handwriting instruction).

In the first session, I modeled proper letter formation for the letters a, b, c, and d. I explicitly modeled proper letter formation, forming each letter from top to bottom and from left to right. In other words, the proper formation of the letter b starts at the top, goes to the bottom, and then curves to the right. I pointed out that the letters a and c are half size and start halfway between the lines, and that the letters b and d are tall and start at the top line. We were meeting online, so I used a document camera to model forming letters in a notebook. I wrote this sequence several times in a row while she watched:

Then I asked her to write the sequence as many times as she could in one minute. I reminded her to form the letters on the line, and to pay attention to half-size and tall letters. Since we were meeting online, I asked her to send me a photo of her handwriting when the minute ended.

In the second session, I modeled the letters a, b, c, d, e, f, and g, and pointed out that the letter g goes under the line. The words half, tall, and under were consistent key words I used throughout this project. In addition, for each letter, I used a consistent set of cues such as:

“down, around” for the letter b
“make a c, down” for the letter d
“make a c, under” for the letter g

We added a small chunk of letters each day until we completed the entire alphabet. After several sessions working up to this point, I asked her to write the entire alphabet, using the model I provided on the screen, as fast and as carefully as she could. Here’s the model I provided to her:

The first time, the task took over two minutes to complete. After several more sessions, here’s her a photo of her timed alphabet handwriting:

Here’s a log of her progress:

As you can see, it took about three months of regular practice for her to reliably be able to write the alphabet in under a minute. Her letter formation automaticity improved slowly but surely. During this time, I also noticed that her improvements transferred to other writing as well. She was able to write words and sentences for Citizenship practice faster, with smaller letters, and letters that fit within the lines and on the line more than they had in the past.

Timed Alphabet Handwriting is a teaching technique that I’ll continue to use with other students.

By the way, if I were working with a group of students instead of a single student, I’d need to handle this a little differently. I’d suggest setting a timer for 2 minutes, and asking all of the students to write the alphabet from a to z (from a visual model) as far as they can within two minutes. For students that finish a to z before the timer goes off, ask them to start again at a and continue. Tell the students that the goal is to write the complete alphabet twice in two minutes.

When individual students in the group are able to complete the goal within two minutes, I’d have them engage in an alternate activity during this time, since spending time on letter formation practice would no longer be an efficient use of their time.

This activity is best suited for students who demonstrate slow, effortful letter formation, but who have already had some time to learn and become familiar with letters. If you are teaching phonics using the abc English Phonics lessons, I recommend using this technique at the end of the Level 2 Phonics Lessons.

I contacted Dr. Cvetkovic to see if she wanted to add anything to this article, and she sent several helpful suggestions, including a reminder that it’s important for students to learn correct letter formation from the very beginning. In other words, we shouldn’t ask students to just copy the letters any which way, but should provide explicit instruction in forming each letter stroke from top to bottom and from left to right. She says, “Learning to form letters correctly from the very outset of literacy instruction creates the rhythm and fluency needed for skilled reading and writing.”

You can learn more about letter formation in the Teacher Training Module: Level 1 Phonics, available at abceng.org/ttm.

* Dr. Cvetkovic mentioned that she learned this intervention technique from Nora Chabazi’s EBLI training. See https://eblireads.com/handwriting1/.

Timed Alphabet Handwriting Task

Improve student letter-formation fluency

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