All 52 letters, stroke by stroke
Tap any letter to write it. Ladderbug checks where the stroke starts, which direction it goes and what order the strokes come in — not just whether the finished shape looks about right.
Capitals first
All 26 capitals start at the top line. There is one height to judge, no midline, nothing below the line, and — the part that matters — no mirror pairs anywhere in the set. That buys about six weeks of top-start, left-to-right practice before a child ever meets a reversible pair, and that habit is the main defence against reversals.
Letter sounds run on their own order at the same time. Formation order and phonics order are different things, and children handle both at once.
Then lowercase
Grouped by the movement they share, so one motor plan gets practised six times before a new one arrives. Notice where d and b sit — different blocks, weeks apart. That separation is the whole b/d fix: the child never has to decide which way round it goes, because the first movement is different.
What gets checked, and what does not
Checked
- The stroke starts on the start point
- It travels the right way, where going the wrong way would make a different letter — N, b, d, s and z
- The stem comes before the crossbar or the dot for T, t, f, i, j, A and I
- It stays inside a corridor whose width is set by age — wider at five, tighter at seven
Not checked
- How many strokes it took. A child who draws E in six strokes has still made an E
- Pen lifts, before age six
- Neatness. A wobbly letter made the right way becomes a neat letter; a neat letter made the wrong way stays slow forever
- Speed. It is recorded and never shown
After three misses on the same stroke, the support goes up and the stroke is given. No child should fail four times running at anything. The letter is marked for re-teaching later rather than for another attempt now.
A finger is not a pencil
Honestly: glass gives no resistance, no grip and no feedback through the hand, and no app transfers fully to paper. What a screen can do, which a worksheet cannot, is check the start point, the direction and the order — and say so immediately, every single time, which no adult can do while making dinner.
Use both. Screen for formation and order, paper and a real pencil for the grip. If an app accepts a letter drawn from the bottom up, it is a colouring book.