Essential Strategies To Overcome Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is a learning disability that can challenge students’ writing ability and ability to express themselves through writing. Children with dysgraphia may have only impaired handwriting or they may have other difficulties with the writing process. This condition may include problems with poor spelling, producing legible handwriting, and transferring thoughts into written language.

Children with dysgraphia often have poor spacial planning, difficulty with control of writing movements, impaired spelling, and dysgraphia may occur with another written language disability and is more prevalent in students with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Despite its complexities, children with dysgraphia can make progress by implementing tailored accommodations within the classroom setting alongside extra practice opportunities targeting essential elements of written expression.

Students Learn & Read Better When They Can Write Well

Some special education teachers, classroom teachers and parents may wonder in this new technological age if they even need to worry about students’ handwriting ability.

Explicit Instruction for Written Expression and Handwriting Matters

Indiana University provided the proving ground for an innovative study conducted by Dr. Karin Harman James, one that aimed to uncover how writing longhand impacts brain activity.

MRI Scans Show the Importance of Written Work

The results were impressive; fMRI scans revealed heightened levels of literacy areas in a child’s brain when they wrote with their own hand – similar to adult neural readings! This highlights the invaluable connection between physical handwriting and key reading and language skills like comprehension & recall; proof that penning handwritten notes is still as important today as ever before.

Recognizing and Understanding Dysgraphia As a Specific Learning Disability

Impaired handwriting alone and poor letter formation are not necessarily indicative of dysgraphia. But since this neurological disorder can cause difficulties that will vary throughout an individual’s lifetime, it is important to investigate. Students with dysgraphia often have poor fine motor skills. Writing involves the development of both fine motor skills and cognitive processes – which sometimes overlap with one another.

Types of Dysgraphia

Researchers have identified different subtypes of developmental dysgraphia because dysgraphia varies among students with learning disabilities.

Motor Dysgraphia

Individuals with motor dysgraphia may struggle with handwriting tasks due to a lack of fine motor coordination resulting in illegible handwriting. The lack of fine motor control becomes increasingly difficult as the writing goes on over longer periods of time. However, students’ spelling skills are not impaired.

Spatial Dysgraphia

For some children, spatial dysgraphia can prove a challenge when it comes to tasks like writing neatly on paper or using the appropriate amount of space between words. This disability is caused by issues with their sense of spatial awareness but spelling is not an issue with spatial dysgraphia.

Linguistic Dysgraphia

Linguistic dysgraphia influences a person’s ability to express their thoughts in written form, with the most noticeable effect on spontaneous writing. Oral spelling and written spelling are affected by this disorder. It is linked to difficulties with orthographic coding or mapping and difficulties with phonemic awareness.

Seek Help in Diagnosing Dysgraphia

If any aspect of writing difficulties proves troublesome for students, it may be helpful to seek further assistance from occupational therapists or special education services to improve writing capabilities. Dysgraphia can coexist with other learning disabilities such as developmental dyslexia. You will need help from educational psychologists or an occupational therapist to diagnose dysgraphia, Here are some signs of possible dysgraphia in the school setting:

• difficulty with motor skills
• difficulty tracing letters
• tight pencil grip and body positioning while completing tasks
• inability to form letters
• illegible written output of spontaneously written work
• avoidance of written words
• tiring quickly during writing activities
• unfinished sentences full of ommissions
• difficulty organizing thoughts onto paper
• incomplete grammar structures that don’t match what they understand when speaking

Three Types of Assistance for Dysgraphia

Crafting an effective plan for supporting a person with dysgraphia requires a variety of strategies in 3 areas.

• Accommodations such as providing alternate forms of written expression
• Modifications that alter expectations and tasks to minimize or avoid the weak area
• Remediation which improves handwriting/writing skills

Remediation Strategies for the Early Elementary Years

Teaching individuals with dysgraphia to write can be challenging, but there are specific strategies that have been proven effective for students with poor dexterity. The disorder generally emerges when children first begin writing. It can affect children emotionally and physically because of the extreme effort they must put into writing. Working with an occupational therapist is recommended to assist with fine motor skills.

Some other helps and strategies are:

• Using paper with tactile raised lines for a sensory guide -Helpful for poor spatial planning
• Increase hand, finger and arm strength to improve fine motor skills-Pinching a binder clip or squeezing a small ball can be helpful.
• Experiment with finding the correct writing tool with different pens and pencils & finding good pencil grips can help a child’s writing.
• Air writing letters and write words while saying the letter name and sound
• Teaching proper grip technique should also be reinforced from an early stage with pencil grips is essential.
• Multi-sensory techniques such as speaking through motor sequences for example I always have students say a script when first forming letters to ensure they are practicing proper order of formation.

Strategies for Older Students with Dysgraphia

As students writing difficulties become older we should continue to remediate fine motor control and handwriting but we also need to add other strategies for modifications and accommodations for writing success.

• The International Dyslexia Association recommends Using cursive instead of manuscript-especially helpful for older students who already have ingrained “bad habits.”
• For math assignments, encourage the use of large graph paper to keep columns and rows organized.
• To aid composition efforts allow extra time for written projects
• Spark creativity by beginning with drawing exercises or recording ideas into a voice recorder.
• Incorporate various types of writing in teaching such as expository essays, short stories and poems
• Change the focus of your lesson on different days to reduce stress between neatness & spelling in some writings while amplifying emphasis on grammar/organization within others.
• Timed Work should not be graded for aesthetics!
• Pause before proofreading- it’s far easier now spot mistakes after taking a mental break
• Produce an effective editing checklist by highlighting things like punctuation accuracy, syntax parity, and clear progression.
• Students should explore various spell-checker tools available -including speech-to-text options
• Encourage Working in small steps rather than attempting to take everything on at once.
• When possible substitute traditional assessments with oral reports or visual projects that allow them to demonstrate knowledge without having to write as much.
• Allow students to write using voice-to-text in Google Docs. This encourages creativity and good grammar and syntax without the burden of handwriting.

Additional Assistance for Older Students

• Note-taking and writing assignments can be easier for all age groups with the use of recorders or teachers’ PowerPoint notes.
• , Make step-by-step plans that break tasks down into smaller chunks
• , Have students make a keyword outline to help organize projects
• Use assistive technology such as Read and Write Google Chrome Extension.

Helping Students with Specific Learning Disabilities Organize Writing

Organizing Writing is difficult for many students to even those without learning disorders but for many students with dysgraphia writing can be like scaling a tall building without scaffolding.

Give Students Tools to Build their Writing Skills

So, these students need to have frameworks to build their writing on so they can organize their thoughts.

Sentence Writing Strategies

Students with dysgraphia that has to do with expressing and organizing language often benefit from sentence frames and then expanding on those frames. We take a very simple core sentence and then build on that sentence with questions.

Using ‘But’, ‘Because,’ ‘So’

Dr. Judith Hochman of the Writing Revolution has come up with an incredible exercise– called “But, Because and So” which encourages students to think deeply about clauses. Not only does it help them build their literacy and thinking skills but also allows students with dysgraphia to explore different ways they can develop a clause while becoming more familiar with syntactical forms that will be used often in class! The best part? Students are able to use this exercise across all subjects.

Using ‘Who’ ‘What’ ‘When’ ‘Where’ ‘How’ and ‘Why’

If a student with dysgraphia takes the sentence “The boy jumped.” and answers the questions ‘where’ ‘how’ and ‘why’ it not only helps to create better sentences but it starts the framework for a paragraph or even a story.

Use ‘Who’ ‘What’ ‘When’ ‘Where’ ‘How’ and ‘Why’ across the curriculum

Take a simple sentence like “Bacteria multiply.” or “The colonists rebeled.” and expand it for note-taking or paragraph writing.   Students state the ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘why’. Like a puzzle, students write and expand sentences. For example, “In the late 1700s, the American colonists rebelled against British taxation because they felt it was unfair unless they had representation in government. Sentence expansion strategies can be practiced in writing warm-ups, as exit slips, and in essay writing. 

Subordinating Conjunctions – After, Before, If, While, Although, Even though, Unless, Since

Like the other strategies above giving students sentence frames to complete while using subordinating conjunctions will assist students with dysgraphia in writing sentences with complexity and interest.

Paragraph Writing Strategies

One of the best tools for expository writing is the keyword outline.Great writing lessons can be found at the Institute for Excellence in Writing. I have used them with great success with both students with dyslexia and dysgraphia.

The Key Word Outline

The Key Word Outline method presents an effective way to help students better understand a given text. By taking the main ideas of each sentence, narrowing them, and then writing three content words for each sentence in the paragraph. Students then take those 3 words and rewrite the sentence in their own words.

A Checklist for Adding to Paragraphs

After the students with dysgraphia rewrite the paragraph this way then they use a checklist and enhance their sentences with alluring adjectives and creative verbs to make the writing more captivating. He also combines phrases or adds adverbs for further expression to polish up their composition. Having a checklist to do this makes the writing process easier to manage and less overwhelming.

Conclusion

Dysgraphia can be a difficult hurdle to overcome but with the right tools and strategies, dysgraphic students be successful writers. Students can get help with handwriting from occupational therapists and special education teachers. They can use assistive technology to help with the writing process In addition, by using sentence expansion methods, outlining techniques, and checklists dysgraphic students can learn to organize their thoughts more effectively and produce more engaging writing pieces. They can become proficient writers!

FAQ:

Q: What is Dysgraphia?

A: Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects a person’s ability to produce written language in a legible and coherent way. It can affect handwriting, spelling, and even composition skills. Symptoms of dysgraphia can vary from person to person but usually involve difficulty with writing quickly and correctly.

Q: What are the Different Types of Dysgraphia?

There are three main types of dysgraphia: Motor, Spatial, and Linguistic. Motor dysgraphia affects the physical act of writing, causing problems with handwriting and letter formation.

Spatial dysgraphia causes difficulty in positioning letters on paper or organizing words into lines. Linguistic dysgraphia affects the ability to form words and sentences correctly.