Cursive writing for Class 2

Get the A to Z book, Rs 149One A4 sheet for every letter, on the ruling in your child's school copy. Ordered on a form, paid on PayU, emailed to you. Ask for the free capitals A to H pack first if you want to see a sheet used tonight.

Last year the copy came back with remarks about the capitals. This year the capitals are fine and the small letters have taken over.

"Size not proper."

"Letters not on the line."

Same red pen, different letters. In Class 2 the child is usually past the stage of wondering how a letter is shaped and into the harder stage of keeping twenty-six small letters the same size as each other, in the right band, at the speed classwork now demands.

The A to Z capital and small-letter pair is 55 pages for Rs 149, on four-line Indian ruling. For a Class 2 child the second half of it, the small letters, is the part you will actually print.

What is different about cursive in Class 2?

Class 1 is mostly about forming a letter at all. Class 2 is about consistency. The letter shapes are known, so the work moves to keeping small letters inside one band, keeping tall letters and tails the right length, and holding all of that steady across a full page instead of a single row. Joins usually start appearing in this year too.

That is why the same advice that worked last year stops working. Telling a Class 2 child how to shape an m is not the problem. Her m is fine on line one of the page and half as tall again by line eight.

Small letters live in one band, and that is the whole difficulty

Look at the four lines in the school notebook. Line 2 and line 3 are the band, and most small letters have to sit inside it and touch both edges. Nothing more.

• The band letters, a c e i m n o r s u v w x z, fill the space between line 2 and line 3.
• The tall ones, b d h k l, start up at line 1 and come down to line 3.
• The tails, g j p q y, sit in the band and drop below line 3 towards line 4.

Written out like that it sounds simple. On paper it is three different heights that a seven year old has to choose between, letter by letter, while also thinking about spelling.

When a Class 2 copy looks untidy, one of these three is almost always the cause, and it is usually only one:

1. A band letter grown as tall as a capital, so o and O look the same.
2. A tall letter cut short, so h and n look the same.
3. A tail that stops on line 3 instead of dropping below it, so g looks like a with a hook.

Pick whichever one you can see most often and work on that. Correcting all three in one sitting gives your child nothing to hold on to.

Take g. Instead of "this is untidy", the useful instruction is that the round part fills the band and the tail goes down below line 3. Then let them write four of them and check only that.

The tails are worth their own week

Five letters go below the writing line: g, j, p, q and y. They are the ones most likely to be wrong in Class 2, because a child who has spent a year being told to stay on the line is now being asked to break it on purpose.

A short exercise that works at the table: write a row of g a g a g a and look at nothing except whether the tails all reach the same depth. Then the same with y and u. Pairing a tail letter with a plain band letter makes the difference visible without you having to explain it.

When the teacher starts asking for joins

Many Indian schools begin joining around this stage, though it varies by school and by teacher. If your child's copy now has words in cursive rather than single letters, joining has started.

Do not treat joining as a new subject. It is easier than it looks if the letters underneath it are steady, and close to impossible if they are not. A join between two letters that are different heights every time will never look right, however much you practise the join itself.

So the order that works in Class 2 is: fix the band, then join.

When you do practise joins, start with the easy ones where the first letter ends near the top of the band and the next one starts there anyway.

• in, un, um, il feel almost automatic once the heights are steady.
• oa, ov, wa, ba are harder, because the exit sits high and the next letter starts low.
• Anything after a tail letter, like gr or yo, is worth leaving until later.

Use the school notebook for join practice, not a worksheet. The joins your child is marked on are the ones the class teacher has taught, and those are written in the copy in front of you.

How a week of ten minutes can look in Class 2

The routine below assumes the school has already introduced cursive and your child is writing small letters. It is ten minutes, not a lesson.

1. Warm up for two minutes on the band. Draw two rows of joined loops that fill the space between line 2 and line 3 without crossing either line. No letters yet. This is the height practice, disguised.
2. Work one height problem for five minutes. Choose one of the three: a band letter too tall, a tall letter too short, or a tail too shallow. Look at the model, then write six letters and check only that one thing.
3. Finish in the school notebook. Write two or three real words with the same letter in them. If joins have started, join them. Circle the best word together and close the book.

1. MonMonday: Find the one problem

   Look at a page written without you watching. Name the height problem: too tall, too short, or a shallow tail.

2. TueTuesday: Same letter again

   Six of the same letter, checking only that one height. One good day is not a habit yet.

3. WedWednesday: Into words

   Three words from this week's spellings that contain the letter, written in the school notebook.

4. ThuThursday: Tails

   Rows of g, j, p, q and y, each beside a band letter, like g a g a, so the depth is easy to compare.

5. FriFriday: Without the model

   Look at the book first, then close it and write. Compare afterwards.

6. SatSaturday: First joins

   If the school has started joining, two or three easy ones like in, un and il. If not, more words.

7. SunSunday: Look back, or rest

   Put Monday's page next to Saturday's and find one thing that improved. Skip it if the week was heavy.

Ten minutes a sitting is a routine you can keep, not a promise about how fast handwriting changes. On a heavy homework night, drop the day. Three or four sittings still make a useful week. Children vary, and so do teachers' expectations.

Before you ask for another row, check this

A full page can repeat the same mistake thirty times. These questions take fifteen seconds and change what the next row is for.

• Do the band letters touch both line 2 and line 3, without crossing them?
• Are b, d, h, k and l clearly taller than the band letters next to them?
• Do the tails of g, j, p, q and y drop below line 3?
• Is the letter size the same at the bottom of the page as at the top?
• If words are being written, is there a clear gap between them?

Where the teacher's letter forms differ from the book, follow the teacher. Two competing models is worse for a Class 2 child than one imperfect one.

Which book fits a Class 2 child

For height and placement, the A to Z capital and small-letter pair, Rs 149 for 55 pages, is the one to get. It covers both alphabets, and the small-letter half is what a Class 2 parent prints most.

If the capitals are genuinely settled and you only want the small letters, small letters a to z is 29 pages for Rs 99 on its own. Capitals A to Z is also 29 pages for Rs 99. Bought separately the two come to Rs 198, so the pair at Rs 149 is the cheaper way to have both, and having the capitals to compare against is useful precisely because height is the problem.

If what you want is the habit rather than the reference, the 30-day challenge is 37 pages for Rs 199, one sheet a day.

The bundle is seven packs for Rs 399, against Rs 1,073 if its packs are bought separately. That includes the joining words pack, which matters more from Class 3 onwards than it does now. You can compare everything in the shop.

Everything here is an A4 printable PDF on four-line Indian ruling. Nothing is posted to you.

Print this week's letters, not all 55 pages

You do not have to print the whole book. Choose the letters your child is working on, print those at home, or take the PDF to the xerox shop near the school.

If you want the first visit to stay around Rs 20 to Rs 30, ask the shop how many pages that covers at its rate. Printing is paid to the shop and is not included in the Rs 149.

Keep three or four sheets beside the notebook and bring out one at a time. A thick stack on the table reads as homework, and a Class 2 child already has homework.

How to order

1. Open the order form.
2. Select the A to Z capital and small-letter pair, Rs 149, and submit your details.
3. Press Pay now, which opens PayU for your total.
4. Pay by UPI, card or netbanking on PayU's own page.
5. Receive the PDFs by email as soon as you pay, then print the pages you need.

Check the email address before you submit the form. That is where the files go.

A card number is never typed on this site. If checkout does not open, nothing is charged and a person emails you a UPI request for the same total.

Questions from Class 2 parents

Give this week's remark one specific job

You cannot stand next to the desk in class. But at the table tonight you can replace "write neatly" with something a seven year old can actually do.

"Show me which two lines this letter has to touch."

"Now write four, and we will look at the tails together."

Get the A to Z capital and small-letter pair for Rs 149, print the letters causing trouble, and keep the school notebook open beside them.

Page updated 2026-09-09.