Current prewriting teaching practice in Australian classrooms for 4–5-year olds

Handwriting is a key component of literacy, allowing children to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. Handwriting challenges often result in a referral for occupational therapy due to its impact on classroom engagement. A foundational skill supporting handwriting is drawing sub-strokes of letters, known as prewriting patterns. Whilst there is some understanding of handwriting classroom instruction, little is known about prewriting teaching practice. This study examined current practice of prewriting within Australian kindergartens through an online teacher survey involving 169 participants. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings identified variation in teaching practices with 75.74% of participants explicitly teaching prewriting patterns. Instruction time ranged from zero to more than 40 minutes. Only 19.53% of the participants received training on prewriting during university and 70.06% sought additional training. Explicit teaching of prewriting patterns is inconsistent within Australian classrooms for 4–5-year olds. Further research could determine how to support teachers to explicitly teach prewriting patterns.