His teacher sometimes scribed for him, which worked out pretty well, but she couldn't do it consistently. They said they were going to let him use speech to text on an Ipad but that never happened.
Scribing is limited in that it takes someone's time to do - so it's not a reliable way to accommodate during at school. The most typical accommodation in elementary school for children who have handwriting challenges is keyboarding, either with a Neo or Alphasmart or a laptop or an iPad or other tablet. I would start having him type this summer - you don't need to have him learn touch typing, but let him come up with his own adaptive finger techniques as he learns. My kids all had fun with BBC Mat typing, so it was a good place for us to start them learning typing - other programs will work too, as well as just having him copy lists or send emails to relatives or play games that require typing etc for practice using the keyboard. It may seem like it takes him forever to type, but compare both his output (detail, amount etc) to what he outputs with handwriting as well as the elapsed time - my ds types rather slow, but it is still considerably faster than his handwriting speed.
If the school is willing to let him use an iPad at school, that will be great! My ds uses an iPad and it has quite a bit of utility for children with writing challenges. I wouldn't, however, expect that voice-to-text will come easily at a young age - that may need to wait until he's a little older, it just depends on the child. Even if he wants to try voice-to-text and it works for him, I'd still also start him typing.
Also, he had to bring his reading group questions home frequently because he didn't get them done in class--when I scribed for him I noticed that his answers were WAY better than when he had to come up with them and write them at the same time.
I scribed for my ds on homework all the way through elementary school and I still do occasionally now that he's in middle school and comfortable with all of his technology. Even with typing and voice-to-text, there are times when it's simply easier for him to write while talking without dealing with recording it or typing it out. Scribing can't happen at school at this point, but imo it's a-ok at home.
I just have to add a snide comment here (directed at the teachers remark, and and please know, I'm not a snide rude person, this just hits a very tender spot in my heart!) - yes, I'm sure it was frustrating for his teacher - but imagine how much more frustrating it was for *him*!
Yes, that's what I was thinking when she said it!
My son has been like this since he was a toddler, and back then it didn't look like he had any challenges at all, except that he was very physically timid. He started writing letters and numbers before he was two and sentences before three.
If he was writing sentences etc when he was that young, I doubt he has dysgraphia, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a challenge with some of the other components that go into the act of handwriting - spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, ordering and organizing words etc. Another test that can be helpful teasing out issues with writing is the TOWL (Test of Written Language) - has he had that? It's typically given by schools or OTs evaluating for learning disabilities related to writing.
Do you mind if I ask if there is a name for the specific expressive language disorder your son has? Also, should I ask a SLP to perform certain tests in an evaluation?
It's just referred to as an "expressive language disorder" - nothing more specific. I'll look tomorrow and pull out the report from his SLP to double-check that but that's all that I recall it being listed as. The test the SLP gave that she used to diagnose was the CELP (I think that's the correct acronym!)... he had a large discrepancy between two subtests and two other subtests but all of his scores were above average (the discrepancy was between something like 99th percentile and 61st percentile... again... I'm just going from memory so I may be incorrect!). The diagnosis was based on that split as well as observations of his behavior during testing - there were no time limits on the test, and there was one subtest where he did come up with answers, but sat staring into space most of the time struggling for several minutes to come up with the answer, so the SLP considered that delay in response to be significant.
polarbear
