The Cornerstone School · grades K–5
Handwriting, Spelling & Grammar
Letter forms, spelling patterns, and the honest sentence — the mechanics that let a thought arrive intact.
Grip, posture, and the strokes each letter is made of — print writing that stays legible at speed.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~10 hours
Unit I — Before Letters
Pencil grip and paper position · Lines, curves, and circles · Top to bottom, left to right
Unit II — The Letters
Straight-line letters: l, t, i, E · Curve letters: c, o, a, s · Tall, small, and tail letters, and the lines they live on
Unit III — Words and Sentences
Spacing between words · Capitals: where they belong · Copying a sentence neatly, then writing your own
Undercurves, overcurves, and the joins between letters — a running hand you can be proud to sign with.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~12 hours
Unit I — Why Joined Writing
How cursive letters lean and connect · Warm-up strokes: undercurve, overcurve · The lowercase letter families
Unit II — Connections
Easy joins and awkward joins · Capital letters in cursive · Writing your name well
Unit III — Fluency
Common words without lifting the pen · Speed without collapse · A fair copy: one page done properly
English spelling looks unruly and mostly is not — the rules, the endings, and the short list you must simply memorize.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~12 hours
Unit I — Patterns, Not Luck
Why English spelling is more regular than it looks · Short-vowel patterns and doubling: hop to hopping · The floss rule: ff, ll, ss
Unit II — Long Vowels and Endings
Silent e and when to drop it · y to i: cry, cried, crying · Plurals: -s, -es, and the strange ones
Unit III — The Hard Cases
Homophones: their, there, they're · Words you must simply memorize, and how · Proofreading your own writing for spelling
A complete thought and its working parts — nouns, verbs, agreement, and punctuation that means something.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~14 hours
Unit I — The Sentence
A complete thought: who did what · Naming words and doing words · Fragments: sentences with a piece missing
Unit II — Building Blocks
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs · Subjects and predicates agree · Pronouns and what they point to
Unit III — Punctuation
End marks and what they signal · Commas in lists, and in pauses that matter · Quotation marks: writing down talk
Unit IV — Better Sentences
Combining short sentences · And, but, because: joining ideas honestly · Editing one paragraph until it reads clean