polarbear, my 9 year old is newly diagnosed as dysgraphic. Earlier this year we hit on a good way to learn her spelling lists and spelling patterns: She finger spells the words with ASL letters. This gets her the literal feel of the words, and forces her to slow down and think through every letter. It's been working well when paired with a variety of other strategies we devised, which I now recognize are multisensory:
*Flash cards written in large, bright colors, with the spelling rule in a different color
*Trace the flash card with her finger
*Picture it in her head and do something to the word to manipulate it.
*Daily reinforcement - working on a list of 12 words for school every morning for 5 minutes (plus her spelling homework and word study work in class) We finger spell and spell out loud each word, and discuss the number of syllables and where the syllable breaks are in each word.
Granted, the above is all for a 4th grader, but my kindergartner is now very familiar with the routine and he's kinda moved in and taken on these strategies.
