Spelling and writing for dysgraphia?

[lyssaflin]

I'm new here, and Ds is 7 (starting 2nd grade). We just received a diagnosis of dysgraphia and mild ADD, and I'm kind of lost trying to plan for next year's writing and spelling. This year we did WWE 1 and AAS 1. WWE worked well-- he found the story excerpts interesting, but the writing was a lot of work and his penmanship is pretty bad. Spelling is especially challenging for him, and AAS was a disaster. We also need to work on grammar in a way that isn't writing intensive. I'd appreciate any suggestions.

 

Thanks!

[rafiki]

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[Laurie]

One of the reasons I chose Easy Grammar for my dd with dysgraphia is the limited amount of writing. The pages are also perforated so you can use them as worksheets if it's hard to manage a workbook.

You can see some sample pages at the Easy Grammar website if you're interested.

[ondreeuh]

This has been an incredible year of progress for my son. My son is dysgraphic but his issues were more to do with his head than his hand. Last year we did Getty-Dubay handwriting to work on the physical part, and that helped a tremendous amount. We tried Sequential Spelling and CLE LA for grammar, but we were spinning wheels.

 

This year I have taken a four-prong approach and we do G-D for handwriting, FLL 2 for grammar (supplementing each lesson with a relevant worksheet), Writing Skills for composition, and Apples and Pears for spelling and working memory (through dictation). They are all working wonderfully but A&P is the huge champion of the programs. *I* don't think there is too much writing, but my son doesn't get physically tired of writing. The lessons get long and you could just do a page a day if that's all your child can handle. We do a lesson a day and it takes anywhere from 30 min - 1 hour depending on his attitude and how much coaching he needs. Now that he is a much better speller, he can spend more attention on choosing his words and writing nice sentences. The dictation practice in each lesson really helps a ton. We are halfway through Level B and there are 3-6 sentences per lesson. This summer we are adding in Daily Language Review which includes editing sentences that are full of errors and I can see that he has developed a good sense of correct sentence structure thanks to all that dictation. Anyway, I can't recommend the program enough.

[merry gardens]

This old thread has a number of really good ideas. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=225647&highlight=dysgraphia

 

In post #3 on that thread, yllek gave a goldmine of links on handwriting and dysgraphia.

[Tokyomarie]

One of the reasons I chose Easy Grammar for my dd with dysgraphia is the limited amount of writing. The pages are also perforated so you can use them as worksheets if it's hard to manage a workbook.

You can see some sample pages at the Easy Grammar website if you're interested.

 

I second the Easy Grammar suggestion. I have had enormous success this year with my son in 10th grade using Easy Grammar Ultimate. When my girls were elementary age, I used Daily Grams from the same company, to supplement what we did using other curriculum for Grammar & Mechanics. I love the daily review that kids get with Daily Grams, but at the time my son was that age, there were no workbooks and he was not able to copy complete sentences. Even now, copying a complete sentence feels like torture. So I abandoned the Easy Grammar path and tried other things but there was never any carryover into his writing.

 

This past year, I purchased the Easy Grammar Ultimate Workbook for my son. For the capitalization & punctuation items, he corrects them right in the sentences already printed; he does not use the blanks provided for rewriting the sentence. By mid-year, I was seeing carryover into his own writing (at this point he keyboards everything he composes himself).

 

For a solid grammar review, I used a book from the Michael Clay Thompson series. We did everything using a whiteboard. My son does better writing on a whiteboard, though he doesn't like the smell of the markers. I agree with trying the Island level. I think it could be very doable for a 2nd grader, but again, no sweat if you don't do much formal grammar work until 3rd grade.

[peacefully]

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[peacefully]

Back on my laptop to post the links and bump this thread.

 

KarenAnne's article on dysgraphia, part 1

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/guest-posts/guest-post-karen-hollis-on-working-with-the-dysgraphic-child/

 

part 2

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/guest-posts/guest-post-continued-karen-hollis-on-working-with-the-dysgraphic-child/

 

part 3

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/guest-posts/guest-post-conclusion-karen-hollis-on-working-with-the-dysgraphic-child/

[lyssaflin]

Thank you so much everyone! It's nice to know that there are ways to work with this issue.

 

Vision therapy made a huge difference in his reading, but not writing or spelling. The testing showed that his dysgraphia stems from a lack of visual motor coordination, but there wasn't much explanation for the spelling issue (or I just may not have understood). He can spell orally and with manipulatives, but he simply cannot get all the letters there when he tries to write a word. I think we will go with Apples and Pears and Grammar Island. I'll also check out the games for writing and the typing program-- that may help us a lot.

 

Thanks!

[Albrosmom]

I just found this thread and it's been extremely helpful. Thank you all so much. I think I'm going to use Read, Write & Type with our dysgraphic eight year old next year (along with lots of other strategies). The blog posts were very enlightening. He's had trouble balancing on his bike even with training wheels. Off to research some balancing exercises!