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Dysgraphia & Boys
What It Takes to Write
Helping Students with
Dysgraphia
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Helping Students with Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia (writing disability) is one of the
most poorly understood of the specific learning disabilities,
although it is quite common and specifically mentioned
in the federal IDEA or Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act.
Dysgraphic students can be helped by accommodations in
the classroom, specific therapeutic interventions or
practice, the use of assistive devices, and
accommodations for standardized testing.
The most common mistake is for teachers to underestimate
how much dysgraphia is impacting on the quality and
quantity of a student's work. Often a student need a
dramatic reduction in the quantity of assigned work.
Making up all of the assigned work at home may be next
to impossible.
Other common adjustments or accommodations for
dysgraphia might include:
- Provision of Teachers notes, or a fellow student's
notes (students with dysgraphia often struggle with note
taking)
- Opportunity to tape record or use a laptop to take
notes in class
- Dramatic reduction in written expectations
- Opportunity to keyboard or dictate responses to
demonstrate knowledge
- Opportunity for a scribe for standardized tests
- Use of word prediction software (for dyslexic
dysgraphia)
Sometimes dysgraphia only begins to cause school
problems when students enter middle or high school, and
the quantity of work grows exponentially. Mathematics in
the middle or high school years, is very demanding for
dysgraphics because of the need to show work, and carry
out detailed procedural steps by writing.
At times, a mathematics software like
MathType may be
necessary to allow a student with dysgraphia to advance
into upper level math classes like Algebra,
Trigonometry, or Calculus.
For more on dysgraphia, please look at the relevant
chapters in our book,
The
Mislabeled Child.
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