Does your student have difficulty in writing?

There are children, who despite good teaching, cannot produce nice neat handwriting.

Dysgraphia is a difficulty writing coherently, if at all, regardless of ability to read.

People with dysgraphia often can write, and may have a higher than average IQ, but lack co-ordination, and may find other fine motor tasks such as tying shoes difficult.

An unusual pencil grip, poor spelling and poor sequencing; poor drawing and poor fine motor co-ordination; poor visual processing and visual perception are often clues to dysgraphia.

Having dysgraphia has nothing to do with how clever the person is. Very often these children are bright with good reading skills.

This makes it hard for teachers to understand why they don’t seem to be able to produce the required standard of written work. They are often labelled as lazy or as not trying although in reality they are doing their best.

Over time this causes emotional distress to the student.
 

Types of Dysgraphia

With dyslexic dysgraphia, spontaneously written work is illegible; copied work is fairly good and spelling is bad.

Motor dysgraphia is due to deficient fine motor skills, poor dexterity, poor muscle tone, and/or unspecified motor clumsiness. Generally, written work is poor to illegible, even if copied by sight from another document.

Letter formation may be acceptable in very short samples of writing, but this requires extreme effort and an unreasonable amount of time to accomplish, and cannot be sustained for a significant length of time. The learning of keyboarding skills is often a solution for these students.

Treatment for dysgraphia varies and may include treatment for motor disorders to help control writing movements.

Occupational therapy should be considered to correct an inefficient pencil grasp, strengthen muscle tone, improve dexterity, and evaluate eye-hand co-ordination.

Dysgraphic children should also be evaluated for ambidexterity, which can delay fine motor skills in early childhood.
 

About the author:

Jenni Wiles is the director of Read Auckland and the past president of SPELD Auckland. Jenni has a severely dyslexic son, with dysgraphia, dyspraxia and behaviours found on the Aspergers/Autistic spectrum. Pens and pencils designed for dysgraphic students can be purchased directly from her at Read Auckland ­­inf­o@readauckland.­co.nz, or Telephone 09-529 1381.