Handwriting Repeater

0:06 Welcome to the Handwriting Repeater, a free tool for UK classrooms. It writes letters and words on screen one stroke at a time, so children can see exactly where each letter starts, which way it goes, and the order of the strokes. There's nothing to download and no account to make. In this tutorial, we'll go through every feature, one by one.

0:32 Let's start with the layout. Along the top are the four modes: Watch, Trace, Write and replay, and Lesson. Next to them are the handwriting style and the lines. Below that is the box where you type, with the Play, Present, Presets, Settings and Share buttons. In the middle is the stage, where the letters are written. Under the letters, a caption says each movement in words. And at the bottom are the playback controls.

1:07 To start, click in the box and type a word. We'll type cat. Press Play, or press Enter on the keyboard. The tool writes each letter in order. The green dot shows where the pencil starts, and the small arrow shows which way it moves first.

1:27 Watch the caption under the letters. It changes with every letter, so you can say the movement out loud with the class: curl round, up and down. When the word is finished, it starts again on its own. That's the loop. Click Loop to switch it off, and the word is written just once. Click Loop again to switch it back on.

1:50 You don't have to type at all. The Try buttons load a set of letters in one click. Curly caterpillar, long ladder, one-armed robot and zig-zag monster are the four letter families most UK schools use. There are also the numbers nought to nine, and a short sentence. Here are the curly caterpillar letters. Every one of them starts with the same curl.

2:16 Capital letters and numbers work too. Here's a name with a capital letter and a number. Anything the tool can't write, like a question mark, is skipped, and a note tells you exactly which characters were left out.

2:32 The playback controls sit under the stage. Pause stops the writing, and the same button plays it again. Restart goes back to the beginning. Drag the speed slider to the left to slow it down for younger children, or to the right to speed it up.

2:50 To teach one stroke at a time, press Pause, then Next stroke. The letter draws a single stroke and waits. This is the moment to ask the class: where does the next stroke start? Press Next stroke again for the next one.

3:08 Three switches control the guides on the letters. Start dots shows the green dots. Arrows shows the direction arrows. And Numbers adds a number to every stroke, so children can see the order. Turn them on and off to suit the lesson. Many teachers start with everything on, then take the guides away as children grow more confident.

3:34 Next, the handwriting style. Print writes separate letters with no tails. Pre-cursive adds a small exit flick to the end of letters, ready for joining. Cursive joins the letters, and the joins are written as strokes too, so children see exactly where each join leaves one letter and enters the next. The site remembers your style on this device, and every other tool on the site uses it too.

4:03 Use the Lines menu to change the handwriting lines. Four lines show the top line, the middle line, the base line, and the tail line underneath. Three lines drop the tail line. Two lines show just the middle and base lines. And baseline only is for children who size their letters confidently. The letters always grow to fill the stage, so they stay big enough to read from the back of the room.

4:33 Below the tool, How These Letters Are Formed describes every letter on screen in words: which family it belongs to, where it starts, and each stroke in order. It updates whenever you change the word. It's useful for teaching assistants, for parents, and for children who use a screen reader.

4:56 Now let's look at Trace mode. Click Trace. The letters turn faint, with their start dots. Children trace over them with a finger on a touch screen, a stylus, or the mouse. If they begin somewhere else, the caption gently says, try starting on a green dot. If they begin on the green dot, it says, good start. There's never a score.

5:23 Undo removes the last stroke, and Redo puts it back. Clear wipes the tracing completely. And Replay plays the child's own tracing back, stroke by stroke. It's a great way to talk about where they started.

5:44 Write and replay is for your own handwriting. Click Write and replay, and you get a blank lined page. Write on the lines with your finger, a stylus, or the mouse. Here, we'll write the word hi.

6:00 Now press Replay. Your writing plays back stroke by stroke, in the same order and at the same speed you wrote it. Long pauses are shortened, so the replay flows. Use the speed slider to slow it down or speed it up, and Loop to repeat it.

6:19 Made a mistake? Undo takes away the last stroke, and Redo brings it back. You can also press Control Z and Control Y on the keyboard. Clear wipes the page. The arrow on the right adds a new page, so you can keep writing. The left arrow goes back to earlier pages, and each page keeps its own writing.

6:44 Save writing keeps this page on your device. You'll find it later under Presets, in My saved writing, where one click plays it back. You can keep up to six.

6:58 Teachers use Write and replay to model their own handwriting on the board, or to put a child's attempt next to the correct letter and talk about the start point. Nothing you write is uploaded. It stays in the browser, on your device.

7:18 Lesson mode runs a short, timed routine for your daily handwriting slot. Type today's letters, then click Lesson. Step one is ready to write: feet on the floor, and pencil in hand. Then comes a warm-up, then watching the model, then practising in books, and finally a quick review. Each step shows what to do, with a countdown. Next step moves on early, and Stop lesson takes you back to Watch.

7:52 Presets set everything up in one click. Open Presets to see the ready-made setups: from one slow letter for Reception, through letter families and first joins in Year 1 and Year 2, to a fluent joined sentence for Key Stage 2. Click one, and it loads the letters, the style, the lines, the speed and the guides together.

8:15 To save your own, set everything up the way you like it, type a name, such as Year 1 Monday, and press Save current setup. It appears under My presets, on this device. Delete removes it. This is also the way to save your own school's style.

8:37 Open Settings to change how the writing looks. First, the pen. Pencil has a soft, grainy line. Pen is smooth. Felt tip is bold. Chalk looks like chalk on a board. And the calligraphy nib makes thick and thin strokes, just like a real broad-edged pen.

8:56 Pen size makes the strokes thinner or bolder: thin, medium, thick, or extra thick. Pen colour has six inks. The first one is the default, and it turns to white chalk automatically on the chalkboard page.

9:15 Page colour changes the background: white, cream, yellow, blue, green, or a dark chalkboard. Choose whichever your class finds easiest to read. The chalkboard is especially clear on a bright whiteboard. These settings apply to the model letters and to your own writing, and they're remembered on this device.

9:39 Present view buttons lets you put the big buttons in the middle, on the left, or on the right of the whiteboard, whichever side you stand. On the right are the keyboard shortcuts: Space to play or pause, the right arrow for the next stroke, R to start again, P for Present view, Escape to leave it, and Control Z to undo. Reset settings puts everything back to normal.

10:09 When you're ready to teach, press Present. The tool fills the whole screen with just the letters and large buttons, easy to reach on an interactive whiteboard. Press Escape, or the Exit button, to leave.

10:25 In Present view, press Draw to write on the board with a red pen, for example to circle a start point. Clear wipes it, and pressing Draw again stops drawing. The Timer button counts down one minute. Press it again for two minutes, again for five, and once more to switch it off. When the time is up, the timer turns red.

10:54 Share and print is where you send the letters to other devices. The link at the top opens this exact setup: the word, the style, the lines, the speed and the look. Press Copy link, and paste it into an email, a class page, or a slide. Nothing is uploaded; everything is inside the link.

11:16 If you've written something in Write and replay, tick Include my recorded writing, and the link carries your handwriting too, so others can watch it replay. That option only goes in the link, not the QR code, because handwriting is too long for a code.

11:34 Tick Pupil view to lock the letters and settings. When a pupil opens the link, they can play, pause and trace, but they can't change the word or the settings. A teacher unlocks it by pressing and holding the notice for two seconds.

11:50 For tablets, scan the QR code with the tablet's camera, and the same letters open on that device. Show the code full screen puts it big on the board, so the whole class can scan it at once.

12:04 Under Save or print, Download picture saves the letters as an image, ready for slides or worksheets. Download SVG saves a sharp version that can be any size. Print this page prints the letters large on A4, or saves a PDF from the print window. And Make a worksheet opens the worksheet generator with the same word and style, with trace, fade and copy rows, ready to print.

12:38 Back on the home page, the tool remembers your last word, and a Continue button in the Try row brings it back in one click. Further down the page, each letter family card has a Play in the repeater button, which plays that family straight away.

12:56 The Handwriting Repeater works on phones and tablets too. The letters come first, with the play buttons right under your thumb, and Write and replay gives a tall page for finger writing. On a tablet or a classroom computer, you can add it to your home screen, and it opens just like an app.

13:16 Everything you type, record or save stays in the browser, on your device. There's no sign-up, and the tool is completely free. You'll find letter formation guides, worksheets and lesson ideas across the rest of the site. Thanks for watching, and happy handwriting.