Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia – a processing problem that causes writing fatigue that intereferes with communication of ideas in writing

Lisa’s definition – the inability to coordinate writing with thinking, often caused by poor gross motor and fine motor skills, which makes the act of writing too cumbersome to do efficiently in conjunction with thinking

Dysgraphia is one of the most common problems that I see. Kids are having an extremely difficult time thinking and writing at the same time. They can't seem to get the messages from their brains to their hands in an organized manner.

These kids can verbally tell you a story that will blow your mind. But ask them to write it, and presto, it's gone. What happened between the idea to the writing part? Many things.

To start with, these kids have brains that work faster than their hands. Some people think the answer is to have them type, but most kids can't type as fast as they think either. Unless they are extremely good typists, they are still left in the dark as far as writing goes.

I believe all kids can learn to write and write well. It takes breaking down the writing process and then slowly adding pieces as you go. For instance, I never ask a struggling writer to write without providing a picture. The picture takes one of the steps out of the process. The student has one less thing to do. I can't tell you how many times I have watched a student sit for twenty or thirty minutes without writing a thing because he was "thinking". With a picture you can just ask the student to write about what he sees. Later on the picture can be taken away.

Another thing I do that helps is to organize the sentence or paragraph for the student. I will put colored dots where I want the topic sentence or the verb, depending on the student's age and ability. This takes the organizational step out of it for the student, which is one less thing for him to think about.

If a student is really struggling to write,I will provide a lot of tracing activities and gross motor exercises with the hands so that the muscles can be built up. Sometimes it is a muscle issue and not a brain issue that keeps a student from successfully writing, yet kids give up on writing because it is too difficult for them.

Eye/hand coordination is an important skill for writing, and if a student is weak in this area, then dysgraphia may pop up. There are many activities that can easily be done to help these students coordinate their eyes with their hands.

Dysgraphia is a real problem, but the kids I work with always learn to write without accommodations or modifications. It takes time and it takes a different approach to teaching them, but they do make progress and succeed. Writing is still an important skill in our society and we need to give our children the opportunity to succeed.