Dysgraphia in HS Students

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According to Regina Richards in her journal article "Strategies for Dealing with Dysgraphia", a teaching technique commonly used is to have the students write information over and over again to reinforce the material. Spelling programs often encourage students to write each spelling word five times or 20 times. For most students, the kinesthetic process of writing does reinforces the material being learned. However, for students with dysgraphia, the process of writing actually interferes with learning. Students struggle to write and so they often spend much more time than their peers on a writing assignment. Even so, they remember less: their writing process greatly interferes with learning. Cognitively, so much of their energy is spent on the process that they often do not learn or even process the content of what they are trying to learn. Students with severe dysgraphia may actually complete a writing assignment and then have to reread it to know what they wrote, especially in a copying task.

Dysgraphia also interferes with a student’s ability to express ideas. According to an IDA Fact Sheet "expressive writing requires a student to synchronize many mental functions at once: organization, memory, attention, motor skill, and various aspects of language ability. Automatic accurate handwriting is the foundation for this juggling act. In the complexity of remembering where to put the pencil and how to form each letter, a dysgraphic student forgets what he or she meant to express. Dysgraphia can cause slow classroom productivity, incomplete homework assignments, and difficulty focusing attention"-- from the IDA website, Fact Sheet #82