NSW Foundation Style Handwriting Worksheets

How to make it

1. Write the practice linesType each word or sentence on its own line. The sheet updates as you type, in the NSW Foundation style font, with no install needed.
2. Choose the size and rowsPick a letter height for the year group, how many rows to trace, how many to leave empty, and gray, blue-and-red or dotted thirds guide lines.
3. Print on A4Print at 100 percent with headers off, or download a PDF. The paper size can be switched between A4 and US Letter.

Searching for an NSW Foundation font?

Many NSW teachers arrive here after hunting for a font to type worksheets in their school's style. Fonts that carry the NSW Foundation name are commercial products sold by third parties; we do not offer or copy them. There is, however, a free and legitimate option. TypeTogether designed a family of school handwriting fonts called Playwrite, released on Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License, and one member, Playwrite AU NSW, is modeled on the New South Wales school style.

This generator already uses that font, so you never have to install anything to make a tracing sheet. If you also want it in Word, Google Docs or on a Mac for your own handouts, our free school handwriting fonts guide walks through downloading and installing it in general steps.

What the style looks like

The NSW Foundation style is the hand many New South Wales children learn from Kindergarten. Letters have a gentle forward slope, round letters are oval rather than circular, and capitals keep plain print shapes. Several lowercase letters end with a small exit stroke that will later become a join, and in the middle primary years, commonly around Year 3, children learn to link letters into a joined version of the same hand.

Playwrite AU NSW reflects the later, partly joined stage: its designers describe it as a semi-connected, slanted modern cursive with print-style capitals. When you type a word, many letter pairs connect automatically. For Kindergarten work on separate letters, type them with spaces between, such as a d g q, and each letter stays on its own. Compare it with your school's chart before printing a whole set, because individual schools sometimes teach small variations. Letters worth checking first are k, f and y, where charts most often differ in the detail of a loop, a crossbar or a tail.

Guide lines that fit the letters

A tracing sheet is only as good as its lines. Here the tallest letters, such as l, k and the capitals, reach the top line, the dashed midline is set at the font's own x-height, and the faint bottom line marks how far tails on g, p and y drop. With this font the three bands come out nearly equal: the body of a letter fills roughly the middle third, which is close to how many Australian handwriting books are ruled.

Size is set from the top line to the baseline. Australian browsers show the Letter size menu in millimeters with school years: Kindergarten children usually start at 25 or 19 mm (1 or 3/4 inch), Year 1 often works well at 16 mm, and by Year 2 many children manage 13 mm. These are starting points, not rules; if a child's letters keep running into the line above, go up a size.

One thing these sheets do not show: arrows

The NSW style rows are traced as a dashed outline of the font, without start dots, numbered strokes or direction arrows. A font only describes the outside shape of each letter, not where the pencil should begin or which way it travels, and we have not yet drawn stroke data for the school fonts.

Teachers manage this in a few ways. Model each new letter on the board first and say the movement aloud. Mark the starting point on the dark example with a colored pen before photocopying. Or, when arrows matter most, use our letter tracing worksheets, where every letter has a green start dot and pink arrows; be aware those letters are upright US-style print, so they show the movement well but not the NSW slope. Families moving between states can compare this with the South Australian style worksheets before the first week at a new school.

Name sheets for a Kindergarten class

Children's own names are usually the first words they want to write. Open the name tracing generator, choose Australia: NSW Foundation style from the Handwriting style menu, and paste the class list one name per line. One page per name is already on, so a class of 24 becomes one 24-page PDF, a child to a page.

Names never leave your browser. If you save the list, it is kept in this browser's storage on this device, ready for other generators later. A copied link includes the names after the # sign, which servers never see but anyone holding the link can read, so share it with care.

Practice at home in the school's own style

Parents often notice that the letters their child brings home look different from the ones they learned themselves, particularly if they went to school overseas or in another state. A child who practices at home in a different hand gets mixed messages about where letters start and how they lean. Printing home practice in the NSW Foundation style keeps the shapes consistent with what the teacher models in class.

Keep home sheets short. Two or three lines of five minutes' work, done most days, tend to help more than a long page once a week. Choose the words from the class newsletter or the spelling list, start each line with the dark example so the child sees the target, and leave one empty row for a try without tracing. If the child tires, stop; a neat half page beats a rushed full one.

The sheet prints the same on any home printer as long as the scale is at 100 percent. Some browsers shrink pages to fit by default, which makes letters smaller than the size you chose, so check the print dialog once and the setting usually sticks.

Three sheets for one Year 1 week

On Monday, print five high-frequency words, such as said, come, they, were and here, at 16 mm (5/8 inch) with a dark example and three faded copies. On Wednesday, turn the same words into a sentence, for example They said come here, with two traced rows and two empty ones. On Friday, leave a single traced row and fill the rest of the page with empty rows for independent writing.

Copy link brings back that exact page, words and settings included, so a casual relief teacher can print the same set; the number in the footer tells you which sheet it was. For how NSW fits alongside Queensland, Victoria and the rest, see handwriting styles by country.