Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional SLP role re:disorder of written expression

Oh! I just thought of something else that I used to do for DS8 last year...

I'd use handwritingworksheets.com (print style, paragraph, size 1, portrait) and I'd compose the paragraph and simply have him trace it. His TA at that time was getting him to trace individual letters and it was making him crazy, so instead I wrote paragraphs that were relevant to him, like about our pets, his hobbies, etc.

My goal was to try and enhance the path that goes from the ideas and events in his brain to his language output centre and finally to his hands. He wouldn't have the stress of composing the language himself but he was still getting exposure to translating ideas and concepts into written language. I explained this to his grade 2 teacher and she thought it was a fabulous idea. (I approached it from a proactive "I'll solve it myself" standpoint rather than saying "the letters you're getting my kid to trace are making him stir crazy - he needs above grade level content, not below.")

On an unrelated side note, sometimes the diagnosis of ADHD is a blessing because rather than hounding the gifted issue (which makes some teachers roll their eyes), I can approach it like: "it's that darn ADHD - we need to challenge him to keep him focused" ...and voila, they're all happy and supportive. lol.

polarbear and CCN, THANK YOU! I'm planning on gathering much of what you're saying into a text document to help me with talking points. And CCN, your tracing idea, that's positively brilliant! I want to give that a try. Sounds like it would be fun for me and not so bad for him. Maybe I can come up with some math jokes

Coming down with the gunk that's been going around town, so I'm heading to bed...I may not get back to the board before Sunday (in-laws, Hanukkah) but keep it coming! If you feel like it, that is

Mo

We've been doing handwriting OT (or hot housing, depending on whether you speak to the OT or the school) for my 6yr old all year. I find it makes a huge difference to mix up what we are doing:

sometimes we are writing the alphabet (teacher insists that being able to write it upper and lower case at speed is important for automaticity),

sometimes writing "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" (the whole alphabet but out of order).

sometimes she writes from memory, some times she copies.

some times she's working on her dotted thirds paper focusing purely on neatness, sometimes she's writing on a single sheet over a towel and working on pressure control (neatness goes out the window).

Once she started ADHD medication it started being possible for her to compose for herself so somedays she does that, the next day I get her to copy my re-written version of her paragraph which has the spelling corrected.

sometimes we doing spelling lists.

I never through to try CCN's approach, which is great, but certainly she would have gone mad and been completely non compliant without some variety.

There has been a significant shift through the year from copying to actually writing, from struggling with forming the letters to thinking about spelling/composing.

We have huge pencil grips to correct her grip, we also had a brace for the first half of the year.

We use dotted thirds paper (which our school does not use or encourage)

We use mechanical pencils to teach pressure control

Then mechanical pencil on a single sheet of paper over a towel, to REALLY teach pressure control...

The better all this has made her handwriting the more she is able to use her brain for the writing... Also the ADHD medication has a profound impact on both handwriting and writing.

10 mins a day at home working on the handwriting with me has been possibly the single most important educational experience she has had this year and I think she would have made zero progress at school without my intervention.

Very interesting that your ds's handwriting got worse over the years MON but is now improving. DD's has improved with OT and practice but it is still very, very difficult. Forget difficult - writing is pure torture for her. Now that she is in the middle of 2nd grade and about to turn 8 her handwriting is probably close to what her peers were doing in kindergarten. It is still painful, though, and she definitely needs the help of her para to scribe. Keyboarding should be getting started soon now that the AT eval was completed.

I just wanted to mention something the spec ed teacher said yesterday. Last week she was working with DD on an assessment for their recent science unit. She said "I have been doing this for 38 years and have done this assessment with more kids than I can count. THIS one was a pleasure. I just read the questions to her and acted as scribe for her answers. I didn't change her words or explain anything. Her understanding was amazing! She explained the concepts so clearly. It really showed how getting these disabilities out of the way and just allowing access to the curriculum can work." I guess that's the goal in all of this isn't it? Just getting the disabilities out of their way...

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

Some more rambling thoughts from our experience - *naming* a diagnosis seems to be tricky and variable (and I don't even want to think about what happens when DSM-V comes out lol!)... for instance, our ds was diagnosed with Disorder of Written Expression in his first neuropsych eval (at 7), but after working with his SLP for approximately one year he lost that diagnosis when he had a follow-up neuropsych eval prior to middle school. When I asked the neuropsych why he no longer had the diagnosis (yet was clearly still struggling with written expression) her answer was that he no longer fell below average on one of the WJ-III Achievement subtests (I think it was the test where you're given two pictures or two words and have to make a sentence from them (can't remember for sure exactly how the subtests worked). It made absolutel sense that his scores on that test had improved significantly, because that was one of the skills he'd been working on with his SLP for, um, about a year. He was still clearly a kid who struggled with written expression.

Our ds also appears to have random ups and downs in what he's able to produce with written expression - some types of written expression are easier than others. He can more easily list factual information and write scientific notes etc than he can come up with creative writing (although he has a very creative imagination). Give him an open-ended writing assignment with no guidance and aaarggh.... might as well just send him directly to a padded cell

polarbear

Just making sure I understand the difference, MON-- is dysgraphia a problem with the mechanics of handwriting, and DWE the organizing of verbal content to be put down on the page?

DeeDee

In our case neuropsych labeled my DD "NLD-ish", including dysgraphia, but psych labeled DWE. I frankly don't see the DWE because she can indeed formulate her thoughts - she just can't execute the writing so it comes out in a very simplified form if she has to write it out. DD is good about punctuation, capitalization, etc. She knows all the rules she just can't seem to do it physically. I therefore lean more towards the neuropsych's interpretation of dysgraphia than the psych's DWE. Then again I may be totally wrong... I wonder if the actual label is a matter of interpretation based on field of expertise. i.e. only the neuropsych could label NLD - from what I understand it doesn't exist in the psych's playbook so she had to give it a different label.

Thanks-- very interesting thread, I'm learning tons...

DeeDee

I just wanted to say thanks for giving me so much to think about Polarbear, did you do any work with a private SLP, or has it all been in the school?

Mo