Dysgraphic kids come in many different flavors - from the root of the challenge to how much they will be able to overcome handwriting difficulties. OT was very successful in achieving legible handwriting, much less hand/wrist pain, good posture while writing, good pencil grip, and even pencil pressure for our ds. OTOH, it did not take away dysgraphia - no matter how great his handwriting worked or how correctly he was able to complete it, his handwriting was still extremely slow and it was still not automatic, hence any time he has to use handwriting it uses up a hugely disproportionate amount of his working memory which in turn impacts writing.
That aside, the original question in this post was about SLP work for written expression, so I just wanted to clarify one thing - we weren't using an SLP to remediate for dysgraphia. Our ds is dysgraphic, but once we had accommodated for his dysgraphia we found he had an *additional* challenge of an expressive language disorder, and that is what impacts his ability to generate ideas and get his thoughts on paper, organize those thoughts, etc. These are things he has difficulty with whether or not he's using handwriting, keyboarding, voice-to-text, scribing, whatever. For a child who is impacted only by dysgraphia with no involvement re written expression, you should see a vast difference in the amount of output when you ask them to "write" verbally vs with handwriting, and you should see their written output improve as they move to typing (as long as their fine motor skills will support typing).
There are also different levels of how far to "push" a child with dysgraphia to practice handwriting. I love CCN's idea of tracing following a story because I can see how that would have really helped my ds be exposed to the concept of how to write a simple story - yet it would have taken him all his energy and patience to have traced maybe 5-6 words before he would have to quit due to wrist pain when he was in early elementary (before handwriting OT). Even after handwriting OT, I think he would have been so focused on the actual act of tracing that I'm not sure there would have been any secondary benefit from exposure to the story.
Just a few thoughts about the complexity of understanding what's up with a child with LDs....
polarbear
