What is dysgraphia? It is a learning disability that causes the physical aspect of writing to be very difficult. It presents itself with poor legibility, slow speed of writing, or even great hesitation in written expression.
It needs to be noted, though, that sometimes a person who struggles with putting their ideas on paper or organizing their thoughts to be put on paper might have a language-based disability, which could be different than dysgraphia. Someone with this more language-based profile will benefit from direct instruction on how to work through all of the writing process steps, especially the “pre-writing” steps, where the goal is to focus on generating and organizing ideas without worrying about how to yet put everything into complete sentences. For more information on this, feel free to hop on over to my blog article, “The Writing Process Made Easy”, or to my shop for a downloadable writing process guide poster to help your students.
If someone becomes diagnosed with dysgraphia, often times an occupational therapist can be of great assistance to help improve fine motor skills. It is important to check, and correct if needed, any awkward pencil grip. If a pencil grip is off, our hands can become fatigued so much more quickly than when using a proper pencil grip. A search online, or consulting with a specialist, can lead you to a variety of pencil grip device options to purchase and experiment with, along with a guide to help instruct proper pencil grips. An occupational therapist would additionally be able to provide hand exercises to try, to help strengthen the grip if that is a problem. Other times, such a specialist may determine that there is a related learning gap of sensory processing disorder. This often shows itself as a person who has an unusually heightened sensitivity to things around them, affecting any of their senses. In the realm of potential dysgraphia, we would be mostly mindful of the sense of touch being impacted. An occupational therapist would have exercises to help the student de-sensitize their over-active sense of touch.
If a person has any of these issues, whether it be something that looks like dysgraphia or actually is dysgraphia, there are some important things to keep in mind. 1) Hone in on skills that need to be addressed, and take them slow. Baby steps are usually more impactful than trying to fix everything all at once and in a hurried way. 2) Be patient. Be encouraging at even the slightest improvement. 3) Also, be consistent, re-visiting skill practice on a regular basis, such as 3 or 4 times a week, without any practice session going too long; 10 to 15 minutes at a time would be a good rule of thumb. These skills to work on, in isolation, might include: proper sized lined paper to practice letter-size consistency, guidance with immediate feedback when the student has difficulty keeping to an even and straight left margin, and possibly practice copying line movement patterns that you provide. These could look like patterns of curves, straight angled lines, or any pattern that resembles a number or letter. Gently correct as you go along.
In a classroom setting, accommodations that are agreed upon between parent and teacher can also relieve some stress for a student who struggles with these hardships. Some examples of these adjustments and allotments might include: allowing more time to finish a project, offering for the slow note-taker to receive shared notes from a classmate or teacher, or permitting a student to present information from assignments or tests in a different format than just writing. Hope for the weary: If these skills and perspectives are addressed in a healthy way, improvement truly can be achieved over time, and often these accommodations will eventually not be needed any more either.
