Irish-Style Cursive Handwriting Worksheets

How to make it

1. Type in English or IrishAdd names, spellings or a sentence, one per line. Vowels with a fada, such as á and ó, print in the cursive font.
2. Set rows and sizeChoose the letter height for the class, the number of traced and empty rows, and the guide line colors.
3. Print the pagePrint on A4 at 100 percent, or download a PDF. Copy link brings the exact sheet back next week.

Cursive from the early classes

In Ireland, joined writing can start earlier than parents from elsewhere expect. National guidance allows cursive to begin as early as junior infants, and some schools teach a continuous cursive from then, with letters that begin on the line with a lead-in stroke. Most schools begin with print or precursive letters in the infant classes and join from first class, and each school chooses. Asking the class teacher for a copy of the letter chart is the quickest way to know which you are dealing with.

If your child's school uses cursive from the start, sheets in print can feel like a step sideways, because the letters look different from the ones on the classroom wall. This page is for those children: practice in a sloped, joined style, made from the words they are actually learning.

What the Irish-style font looks like

The letters on this page come from Playwrite IE, part of the Playwrite school fonts by TypeTogether, free on Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License. Its designers describe a sloped, continuous cursive. Lowercase letters join throughout a word through the font's own connecting strokes, and one detail stands out: capitals connect to the letter that follows, so a name such as Aoife or Cian is written in one movement from its first letter.

The slope is noticeable but not steep, and the shapes are rounded. Like any school-style font, it is an interpretation of a style, not a copy of a particular school's chart, and there is no single national handwriting model to match it against. Compare a few letters with what your school teaches, especially capitals and the letters f, k and z, which vary most from one chart to another.

Fadas, Irish names and bilingual sheets

Irish words need the síneadh fada, and the fonts on this site include all of them in lowercase and capitals: á, é, í, ó, ú and Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú. That means names such as Siobhán, Seán, Éabha, Róisín and Ciarán print correctly in the cursive style, with the fada sitting above the joined letter. The two print styles draw the fada too, as the letter with its mark.

This makes bilingual sheets straightforward. Put a short Irish phrase on one line and its English on the next, for example Dia duit and Hello, or Go raibh maith agat and Thank you, and children practice joins in both languages on the same page. For class lists, the name tracing generator gives each child a page of their own name with the fada in place; choose Ireland: joined in its style menu.

Not the old Gaelic script

Some people searching for Irish handwriting are thinking of something else: the traditional Gaelic script, sometimes called cló Gaelach, with its distinctive letter shapes and the dot above consonants to show lenition. That script was widely used in Irish schools and print until around the middle of the twentieth century and is still used for signs, inscriptions and decorative work.

These sheets do not use it. They are modern school cursive in the Roman alphabet, the way Irish children write today, with a fada on vowels and h after a consonant to show lenition, as in modern spelling. If you want the traditional script for a project, you will need a dedicated font for it.

Tracing without arrows, on lines fitted to the font

Each traced copy is a dashed outline of the joined word, so the child follows the full shape including the joins. What the outline cannot show is where a letter starts or which way the pencil moves: fonts hold outlines only, and we have not made stroke data for the school fonts, so there are no arrows or start dots in the Irish style. Show each letter on the board first, then let the sheet carry the repetition.

Our print styles do have start dots and arrows, but they are unjoined American-style letters, so they suit an Irish class only for teaching direction. The guide lines follow the Irish font: the top line meets the tall letters, the dashed midline marks its x-height, which is close to half the full height, and a faint lower line shows how far tails drop.

A fortnight with a second class group

Picture a second class teacher whose pupils joined letters patchily last year and now need it to settle. In the first week, the focus is one family of joins at a time: letters that swing up from the line into short letters, using words like in, un, mum and nut, at 16 mm with a dark model, three traced copies and one empty row. Midweek the class moves to joins from the top of o and w, with words like on, owl and won.

In the second week, the same joins appear in the weekly spellings, half in English and half in Irish, for example lón, bord, scoil and múinteoir next to lunch, table, school and teacher. One traced copy and two empty rows ask more of each child. On Friday, a single sentence from the class reader at 13 mm, written once from the dark model, shows the teacher who needs another week on which join.

Saved lists keep each week's words on this device, ready to drop into a word search or bingo game the following week without retyping.

Sizes from junior infants to sixth class

As a starting point, infants often work at 25 mm or larger, with a dark model and two or three traced copies of only a few letters. First and second class usually manage 19 or 16 mm and short words. By third and fourth class, 13 mm with sentences fits, and fifth and sixth class can practice at 10 mm, close to the ruling of a standard copybook. Irish browsers show the Letter size menu in these millimeter sizes. Children within one class differ, so change the size for the child, not the class.

For copywork in the senior classes, the sentence tracing worksheets page offers the same Irish style. For how Irish practice sits beside joined writing in England, cursive in the US and the Australian styles, see handwriting styles by country.