21st Century Learning with Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is a learning disability which can impede or affect a person’s ability to control their handwriting and fine motor skills. Often times this can lead to illegible handwriting, trouble using different types of letters (such as upper and lower case letters) and spacing, as well as difficulty copying material and multi-tasking. This disability can also cause students’ to develop cramps in their hands due to poor writing posture/technique. With the development of technology, we now have a multitude of resources that are available to help students overcome these challenges. For example:

• Penfriend and other text prediction software can help students who are slower at typing to become more confident writers as the program is able to help predict future words, thus causing less strain on the student. Other speech to text programs can also aid in alleviating some of these problems as the student would only need to talk into a microphone in order to record their thinking. Audacity would be a great example, whereby students can record their conversations and submit the audio file for the teacher to listen to. Similarly, teachers can use video recorders to record student performance, rather than asking for a written document, thus allowing the student to demonstrate their learning in a multitude of different ways. Computers can also help students with dysgraphia, as they may be able to type more accurately than they can using paper and pencil. Students could also use the spell-check feature in order to assist with their spelling and grammar depending on their dexterity. 
• SMARTBoards may also assist students as the teacher can write the notes on the device and then save/print a copy of the completed notes, thus allowing the student to focus on the content rather than trying to copy all of the information down off of the board.
• In mathematics, where sometimes it isn’t easy to explain the steps to a problem out loud, the teacher could provide the student with cloze notes (where the formula and problem are already recorded) to help reduce the amount of writing the student needs. Similarly, Excel or graphing programs, such as Geometer’s Sketchpad, could help the student to draw shapes, images and graphs instead of asking them to draw them on paper to illustrate their solution or understanding. 

Through these programs which utilize 21st century skills and technology, students with dysgraphia would be able to place a greater focus on learning the content and presenting their understanding, rather than focusing on their ability to copy down the information and neatly communicating their ideas. At the end of the day, we as teachers want to be able to assess what our students have learnt, and for students with this disability, traditional paper-and-pencil assignments may not fully represent their comprehension as writing can be a frustrating and tiring experience. Rather than discouraging them, teachers could use the above strategies to help the student reach their true potential.