Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional dysgraphia/DCD accommodations and AT suggestions

DS in third grade had an IEP meeting and I passed around samples of his writing. His handwriting has actually gotten worse in the past two years. He can write neatly for short samples but he doesn't like to. His brain works much faster than his hands. He has developmental coordination disorder and if he doesn't have dysgraphia it is similar enough that he will need the same sort of adaptations. It is obviously a motor deficiency and it causes illegible handwriting.

I suggested that anything over a paragraph, he needs to use some sort of AT.
Anything under a paragraph and he needs to write neatly. He shouldn't be allowed to turn in sloppy, illegible work. Even his math worksheets and tests are illegible.

No one likes the idea of having him re-do his work because he will get upset and resist doing the work.

They claim they have tried AT but
1. He doesn't like it and claims it is too fussy. They have tried having him keyboard, SnapType for math (where they take pictures of his math worksheets and then he can type his answers--DS claims this is too fussy and it's faster to just write).

2. Speech to Text doesn't pick up a lot of his speech because of his articulation and/or prosody issues and he doesn't like it.

I feel like the people on his team don't really know what they are doing. They may try something for a couple days, DS grumbles about it, and they give up. I mentioned having an AT eval a couple times and they just sort of dismiss that suggestion saying they have tried things.

He is due for a 3-year re-evaluation in the fall but they want to do it now. Any thoughts?

Ummm yeah he needs an AT eval and don't let them try to convince you otherwise. A proper AT eval will assess his abilities and formulate a plan which, if faithfully executed, will allow him to fully access his education. Period.

I would not have him rewrite his work. If he is dysgraphic this is just going to serve to frustrate him and really won't accomplish much. It's not that he's sloppy or lazy - it is a disability. Handwritten work is *very* difficult but he doesn't know what it's like for the other kids to find it easy to do. Personally I would rather have my kid focus on the learning part of her day than stressing out over trying to climb the mountain of making her handwriting look better. In my DD's case spending time and energy making her handwriting look better didn't serve much purpose school wise. Yes she can write a note on a friend's birthday card (of course with her dyslexia spelling still isn't there either so her notes look they were written by a much younger kid...) but she can't really use it to effectively demonstrate her knowledge. She just can't do it.

All through first grade the OT at the public refused to even consider introducing keyboarding despite the obvious need. Her feeling was "it's not developmentally appropriate to introduce keyboarding prior to 5th grade." Absolutely ridiculous. Fortunately the district's director of special services intervened and authorized an AT eval. (And of course since then the state has gone to computerized standardized testing so now kindergarteners are being introduced to keyboarding... Yeah ... Don't even get me started on that one...)

Her AT eval was done in 2nd grade and was about 25 pages long - then she had a supplementary one to assess just what would be the best keyboarding strategy to use which was another 8-10 pages or so. This is so much more that just trying different things for a couple of days. When she was placed at the OOD spec Ed school for third grade her OT was increased to 2 1/2 hours a week divided between work on handwriting and AT. Lots of difficulty getting voice to text to work with a child's voice, especially with her speech issues. DD had an app that allowed her to snap a photo of math work sheets and write with her finger rather than having to hold a pencil - that worked great and was a big part of getting her comfortable using her iPad.

By 4th grade they found that the built in voice to text that comes on iPad 2 or higher worked really well with DD'S voice. The district upgraded her iPad and we also bought one for her to use at home. She uses the app CoWriter which allows her to move back and forth between keyboarding and voice to text - ie if voice to text isn't picking up a word she says she can type it in. Or if she's typing and not getting close enough for word prediction to guess what she means she can speak the word instead. We also introduced cursive since some dysgraphic kids find that easier than printing. Now in 5th grade the OT thinks DD has come as far as she can with handwriting and DD prefers to handwrite her math work. The rest of school is completely dependent on Assistive technology - audio books, voice to text, text to voice, apps that allow her to copy and paste or use graphic organizers - I really don't know where she would be without it.

So no don't let them avoid the AT issue. It can be life changing.

Thanks for the suggestions. Do you remember which app she used for math? I am not sure what exactly the issues were with SnapType but DS would grumble about it at home and say that the teacher took the picture of his math upside down and it was useless anyway...things like that. Next year he may have an actual textbook for math rather than worksheets...so then what? I can't see him copying problems into a notebook.

It just kills me to see his writing in first grade, after a no-nonsense teacher had worked with him. It looked almost normal. Now we are back to preschool scribbling. DS has a disability but it seems like he should be required to put in some effort. It's hard to find a balance.

Also, I don't know if the OT at the school has been particularly helpful. So it makes me wonder if he had a better OT, would things have gotten this bad. I feel that they are giving up on his writing and she is not going to even try with him anymore, even though his pencil grip is incredibly awkward, he probably isn't forming all the letters correctly, etc. I feel like they are not going to increase his services for OT (he only gets 3X per month, maybe for 20 or 30 min. at a time) and I have to choose between her working w/ him on AT OR handwriting.

It may have been Notability. I can ask her when she gets home from school. Also worth noting - a properly done AT eval will include a list of recommended apps to try. In looking for the name of that app I came across several emails listing apps that have been tried or recommended. It's a work in progress - DD has tried a lot of different apps keeping the ones that help and moving on from the ones that don't help as much. Also the AT person remains involved working with DD about once a month to track her progess, see where she needs more support, try new things with her, etc. There is no way DD could/ would have been doing as well as she is without this part being taken as seriously as it has been. I pushed - hard - and I'm really glad I did.

Ok, thanks. Let me know and I'll take a look at it. The school is in flux right now and basically changing ownership from one district to another. So I don't know what I'll be able to accomplish but I'll try. It's possible some of the staff won't be the same and if they are not the new staff will take months to figure out what is going on with DS. Either way it seems hopeless right now.

FWIW, I'd suggest anything over a short 1-2 sentence answer should be keyboarded. If he's still getting used to keyboarding, scribing can be included as an accommodation, but you don't want him scribing long-term, the goal is to work independently.


Use those illegible pieces of classwork as evidence he is not able to fully communicate his knowledge using handwriting. It's not that "he shouldn't be allowed" - just keep focusing on the school needs to provide him a way to show his knowledge.


Again, the thing to focus on isn't that he gets upset and resists doing the work if he's asked to re-do - of course he does, and most kids would. The thing to focus on is what the limitations on his abilities are due to his disability. That sounds depressing in some ways, but it's reality. He can't rely on handwriting to show his knowledge, therefore he shouldn't be put in the position of having to use handwriting to show his knowledge.


We found that it was much easier for us to test AT at home and then recommend it to the school rather than relying on the school to come up with AT that worked for our ds. This isn't exactly how it's all *supposed* to work - but it worked, and in the end, that's what mattered. We did find a local resource group that was able to help us try out software and devices/apps that we didn't have at home (found them through wrightslaw), and I also picked up quite a bit of info through online researching. We were also helped by a private OT eval looking specifically at AT. It would have been nice and less expensive in the case of the one OT eval if we could have had the school provide all of it, but we didn't have a school willing or a school district AT rep that was all that knowledgable re dysgraphia at that point in time, so it was well worth the time and effort to do it ourselves.


He's still really young to be using speech-to-text. Even my high school ds doesn't necessarily like it (and yet many of his non-DCD friends use it all the time lol!).


Trying things without a plan to put the AT in place, collect data, and then evaluate results isn't an AT eval. On the one hand, the school needs to do an AT eval. On the other hand, when we finally were able to get an official AT eval through our school, we already had a good idea of things that would and wouldn't work for our ds, and the AT eval was going to stretch things out unthinkably long (from ds' perspective) because the AT evaluator insisted we try one piece of tech at a time, try it out over several months, and prove that it works and was necessary. It wasn't as cut and dry as you'd think to prove that a specific piece of AT was necessary and "worked" - particularly when our ds was still only 10 (at the time) and also had issues with generating words due to an expressive language disorder. Even things like testing co-writer, which were so obviously useful to ds at the time, felt like they might fall through the cracks if subjected to the way the district wanted to collect data in order to prove they were needed.


I would ask why they want to do it now, and consider the reasons. I'd also consider when the eval would be most useful and less disruptive to your ds' school schedule. And... if it was me, I'd seriously consider waiting until fall, and in the meantime try everything you can at home and over the summer to get a good idea of what *you* think will work best for your ds.

Best wishes,

polarbear

You might be seeing regression due to dysgraphia or dyspraxia here rather than lack of effort on the part of your ds. Our ds was able to learn how to form letters correctly through an intensive handwriting OT effort in 3rd grade, but today he doesn't form letters that way necessarily. It isn't due to lack of effort, it's dysgraphia. He also learned how to write cursive in 4th/5th grade and he wrote it really well and legibly (his teacher claimed it was among the neatest cursive in class) - but he forgot everything he knew about cursive over the summer before 6th grade and even today has to practice writing his signature in cursive before he signs forms just to be sure he gets it correct.


Our ds definitely benefitted from handwriting OT - what he took with him that's lasted were a correct pencil grip and handwriting posture. And that's actually huge for a dysgraphic kid - it meant no more pain in his wrist while handwriting. The gains re legibility and how to form letters didn't necessarily stick, but the OT was well worth the time and $ invested for the grip and posture.

In a hurry and gotta run, so hopefully I've explained that well enough for now!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Another reason his handwriting might be getting worse as he gets older is that he needs more of his brain power for the thinking part of the assignment as assignments get more complex (thinking of the sentences, spelling, grammar, etc.) which leaves less of his brain power for the writing portion. This is what I see with my DS. He did OT to learn to form his letters and write well, and while it wasn't beautiful it improved quite a bit. However, the neat handwriting went out the window when he had to actually think of what he wanted to write rather than just write the letters themselves for practice.

DS uses a mix -- for short assignments (one or two sentences), he handwrites. For longer writing or a sheet full of one sentence answers, he uses a mix of AT. It is definitely a learning curve full of frustrations. He does a mix of typing, voice typing (speech to text) and us scribing for him. It all depends on the purpose of the assignment. For things where we want to capture all that great information he would leave out if he had to handwrite or type himself because it would be too much for him (because he is still learning to type well), we scribe for him. However he has to do the edits on our scribed version. We type it just as he says it. When he is typing for himself, he will mix typing and voice typing. However he does get frustrated with the voice typing not recognizing what he is saying. His accuracy will improve as he practices more and learns to speak clearly and slowly. It is our goal to not be scribing for him at all, but we realize at 8 years old he just isn't there yet. It is a process...

We don't have great accomodations for math except he only has to half the number of problems if it is a worksheet with many similar problems.

You made the comment that he needs to put in the effort. I absolutely understand what you are saying and have had the same thoughts myself about DS. The thing I have come to realize about my DS is that even though it might not look like he is putting forth effort and has taken some steps backwards, it doesn't mean he isn't trying really hard. I have come to understand his limitations, accept them and realize that no matter how much he practices his handwriting can only improve so much.

DD confirmed that it was Notability. It worked well because she could use her fingertip and write herself without having to hold a pencil.

Reading through this thread has reminded me of some other things we tried with DD before getting OOD placement. Some may help:

- copying was time consuming, difficult and distracting so it was eliminated. Her classroom teacher couldn't or wouldn't understand this so it was actually written into the IEP that DD was not allowed to do any near or far point copying tasks unless she was working with the OT or resource teacher. This was HUGELY helpful.

- all worksheets were run by the resource teacher before being given to DD. She still had to do the work but in a more user friendly way. ie word banks were numbered so she could write the correct number instead of writing the word or copying the sentence, instead of rewriting a sentence she would cross things out and just write the correct punctuation or words, resource teacher would rewrite a handful of math problems in clear, large ink, etc. Doing this meant she could actually complete the assignment rather than taking the entire time just to write her name at the top of the page,

- At the end of 1st grade the teacher started scribing at my request and DD came out with exquisite, creative stories rather than 5 illegible lines of short simple words and phrases. In 2nd she had a para to scribe for her - first part time then full time. These were probably necessary steps because all knew we were headed to OOD placement. Depending on your child's level of disability scribing could be a very useful bridge tool while you work out the AT and he gets up to speed on using it.

- in K no one would accept that DD was having trouble due to possible disabilities. She was called lazy, uncooperative and disrespectful for trying to get out of doing her work. This triggered HUGE anxiety issues. In 1st she was formally identified and some folks got it some didn't. We had a completely unqualified principal who insisted that "a lot of 1st graders have trouble with that" rather than listen to her own special Ed folks explaining why it was different for DD and that she needed special supports. In first grade other kids pass through this phase as they learn to hold a pencil and properly form their letters. Our kids don't necessarily look that different at that stage. For my DD the gap was quite noticeable by the end of first grade, huge by second grade and potentially insurmountable by third grade. She just can't be held to the same standard. No amount of effort on her part will change that. Modifying the way work is presented provided a (more) level playing field.

I appreciate everyone's comments and suggestions. I received an updated copy of the IEP and they are trying to drop direct OT services altogether and have indirect services (exploring AT possiblities) for a whopping 30 min. per month. I had passed around handwriting samples showing exactly how bad his writing is. I asked in an email (before the IEP was sent home) about an AT eval and copied a lot of one of Pemberley's posts (I didn't say where it came from). I gave them a Davidson link to an article about dysgraphia with ideas of how to accommodate, modify, etc.. None of that matters apparently. We sent an email back saying that we have concerns about dropping OT when there is not even a plan in place for AT. It could take a long time to find something that works if they are planning on just checking in on him in class for 30 min. per month. We said that we are not comfortable dropping handwriting services until another plan is put into place, and he should at least be able to write short samples (like a sentence) and have it be legible. That is never going to happen unless he practices writing. Waiting for a reply/answer.