The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Students with Dysgraphia - Case Study Example

Introduction The aim of the essay is to investigate how a child or student with writing skill disorder can be corrected. The main problem that can come is writing problem and this can be disguised as well. For example a child who is having a drawing skill may be having a problem in writing (Matti-Zissi 1998). That means drawing skill is not related to writing skill even though it may be difficult to digest. The other problem will be the disability that is not pronounced like having a ear disk or having a glass or having a walking stick and Dysgraphia is a disease that is well disguised. This comes out into open the moment the child starts writing only and that can start affecting the confidence e of the child when the student gets back the papers loaded with red inks and corrections. That can create a situation of child losing self esteem and self confidence and can create a behavioral problem associated with the child. The child or the student should be organized back to normal life as the hidden talents will come to the surface and training in coping with disability and taking steps to remedy it will create the much needed confidence and can meet the challenges of the world. Literature Review Dysgraphia This condition can be termed as retarded development in the skill of writing and this difficulty can be subdivided into three groups. The first subgroup is the abnormality in motor learning and execution and the second subgroup can be said as having difficulty with the syntactical aspects of writing language like language, spelling,sentence construction that can be termed as grammar and abnormal content that can be termed as semantics. Writing has been found to be the last language skill that will be developed and it is the reason why any abnormality in writing has been found to be persisting longer in the disorder of language development. That can develop slow speech in the child. The child or the student has been seen developing inappropriately sized and spaced letters and writing wrong words and misspelling words. This will be happening even when instruction will be given. The words and letters will be unfinished and will be omitted. There will be complaints of the student not finishing the assignment on time. The writing may be slow and laborious and the child may be good in oral response. Q or Y has been seen as tail going the wrong way and number 5 and 3 is reversed or W has mini tail that is placed wrong side of letter. The sequencing of letters has been found to be difficult for Dysgraphia patients like “Their” or “Their” or “frist”” or “First” and words has been found running together with little space. Words have been floating above the line and sometimes it has been floating below the line. A random mix of lower case and uppercase has been found in some cases. The letter has been found to be in opposite directions with slant being a problem for some writers. Strong verbal skills have been found in Dysgraphia patients and the discrepancy between oral and writing skills has been found pronounced. Dysgraphia will be affecting the child in variety of angles and the main angles are self esteem and self confidence. In the early years of the child, the condition is found to be non stressful as the child may not be dealing other than parents. The moment the child enters school, that becomes an alien atmosphere and competition and mingling with other adults beyond parents can cause stress in the child. The most important part in dealing with a Dysgraphia student is to help the student to reduce the humiliation that she or he may face. The writing is a problem for constant embarrassment and even reading problems can be disguised. This can come out in open in any grade of the student and that can make the happy playful nature of the student to fall apart. That can make the child do everything to get out of the situation of writing and can cause serious behaving problem in the school and class. Getting a pencil or pen in hand can make the child suffering from Dysgraphia froze and it is in this context the treatment has to be done. The Childs high intelligent quotient may not be the only solution to the problem. That is where therapy in Dysgraphia is needed. Therapy for Dysgraphia is a slow ongoing process that requires a lot of patience and it should not be considered as a silly issue. Dysgraphia has been common in child suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Ronald D. Davis, Eldon M. Braun 2003). That is because information is processed at faster pace and will have fine motor coordination that is needed to keep with thoughts. It has every chance of being ignored as the child may be always in a hurry and everyone can possibly infer that the child is not willing to pay attention to details. The main reason for this every parent hates being labeled their child as abnormal and that can cause considerable stress in teachers and parents alike. For teachers who does not know about the disease ,that can cause considerable strain as that can affect the teaching process and the teacher can force the child to be shifted down into grade that is lower than norm. The special need of the children will be ignored and considerable stress will be placed on the student and that can lead to stressful behavior from the child. Skills in reading, listening and speaking has to be developed in a child before writing skills and strong foundation has to be developed in these areas before writing skills. The present education system is always focusing on writing skills first and this has to be done after developing adequate skills in other areas. The introduction of uppercase and lowercase has been found to be creating confusion in many children and cursive writing has been found to be effective in teaching writing (Van Galen 1993). Poor handwriting has been one of the main causes for occupational therapy and children have been dysfunctional writing (Karlsdottir 2002). Methodology and Analysis Assessment has been the first step that was used for designing effective intervention for individuals and group of students having difficulty in writing and spelling. The main aim was to determine accurately what the student can do actually and what aspects of the writing are giving them difficulty. The assessment strategies included the direct observing of students at work. The strategies used by the students were analyzed and the attention span, concentration, motivation, interst, persistence when faced with difficulty, was understood in detail. The factors like self monitoring and self assessment of the student was understood in detail. The effective use of the available time was analyzed in detail. This factor can be termed as observant behavior as the strengths of the student can be understood in detail. This was done to understand the developmental age of every student so that individual training programs were designed keeping that in mind. This because a child that may be having an age of 8 may not be having a mental growth of 8 year child and will be having a growth of five year child and training has to be done by keeping the mind set of five year old child. The main thing that was done on the training for the students was that it was not purely relying on kinesthetic training. By kinesthetic training what was implied on was the training on movement of muscle, tendon and joints. The cognition training was also relied on and the child was shown what to do by speaking rather than doing and showing. This was done as the listening skills would be also developed and the thought process will be going stronger in the mind of the child. The writers existing knowledge and skills were understood by analyzing the work samples and that had given insight to the quantity that was written daily and the quality of writing. The neatness and self correction of the student was understood in detail. The most important thing that was taught to students was that writing was not an end but a process in communication. The main thing that was drilled into the students mind was that every student was treated seriously. The students were drilled the fact that it takes heap of manure to grow a flower and patience and perseverance were taught in the children. The first writing experience that was given to students was to describe in less than three sentences the room that the student was living in.The description was ordered t o be vivid as any person who has not seen the room will have understanding about the room. Then this material was used as the first feedback. The discussion with students regarding writing plans was done and clears understanding of why writing was difficult was for them. The first step was to make the student to talk with themselves while writing and made the student draw a long line from the left to right in chalkboard. The student was made to draw a circle in toward the body and made the student draw line from bottom to top(Broderick 1987). The aim of this exercise was to make the student get grip of hand. The letters and alphabets were traced by fingers and geometric figures were also traced by the student and this was done to make sure that the student feels confident about writing letters. The students were made to reproduce the figures learned on wet sand. Wet sand was chosen because that can help the grip of the student. The students were kept with their eyes closed and in their hand, alphabets were written using hand. The students were made as a group and they were given games like finishing the building of house that taught the concept of vertical line (Suzanne H. Stevens 1996). A crown was being made to put on the head of a dummy king and that taught the students the value of sharp peaks. Circles were made to be drawn like a man face and shape like half circle was taught by putting handle on other cup. The student were made to get the shapes back on command and the other interesting match or game that was done was to place the cup in cupboard. The students were given instructions to put green cup over blue cup and red cup over yellow cup and so on. A scrapbook of pictures was prepared and it had words like in, out, below, under, on, up and down. The students were given exercise to come with pictures in magazine that means these words. The students were encouraged to come with figures as they have the power of building hand grip. The students were given manipulated tools like screwdriver, hammer, and spoon in a variety of situations that helped the student to develop motor practice. Spelling has to be following rigid rules of language. The student was made to look at the word and use it in a sentence and the student was made to think about the imagery of the word. The student was forced to write the word from memory and after writing it will be checked against every letter in the word. The child was made to cover a word after looking at it for some time and was made to write it. The expression of idea by student was given priority and student was given priority in quality of input experience so that their output was improved. The student was exposed to variety things like field trips, discussions and storytelling to create an interest in writing experience. The usage of computer was drilled in the minds of the students. The student was taught the value of spell-check in computer and how it can turn around the confidence in the child. The keyboard skills of every student were improved upon and each student was encouraged to share writing with others. The patterns of the keys were taught and typing was made faster than handwriting. The handwriting was also made to be strongly practiced and that had to be drilled down. A tape recorder was given for recording the speech of students and that was played later to write the matter. The students were then given a strong emotion to write about and each student can think of any emotion like love, hate, jealously and anger. How that emotion affected them physically was made to be written down and this was made as group writing and each member of the group was made to share the matter with each other. The main thing that was done was that each students unique talent were harnessed, There were some students who were excellent in drawing and for them a competition was done to improve their self esteem. The students were given the confidence to draw about anything from the nature by watching it in real like the sunrise and sunset and getting it in paper. The student’s drawings were displayed publicly in front of other students so that the confidence e level had gone up. The students having Dysgraphia were given a game called Boggle(Kathryn Stewart 2007). Boggle is a game that contains 16 cubes in a plastic box. The each side of the cube will be having a letter and the group of students has been forced to shake the box till the cube has settled in the available 16 slots. The main aim of the game was that many words possible were made in limited time in facing up the slot. Learning to write quickly was the main aim and that will determine the high score. Every student was given encouragement on the progress made and helpful suggestions were passed. Every student was given input that was subtle in nature so that the students were not given feeling of being tutored. The students were getting frustrated and they were kept on task by reinforcing appropriate social response. The main fact that disability can affect emotionally was drilled down and students were taught to cope with it rather than ignoring it. It was a case of students understanding their self. Each student was given the importance of acting in a situation and student had to listen, pay attention, speak politely and stay focused and the students who met this order were encouraged warmly. The students were drilled the fact that sloppy behavior will be met in such a manner that games will not be played. As a mentor every step was taken to remain upbeat and positive and that positive vibes were passed onto the student. Everyone was drilled the fact that they were special and everyone was helped to develop the skills that they already have. It was not only concentration on writing and vocabulary but also on temper and enjoyment. The organization skills of the students were developed and this was done using daily and monthly calendars, keeping color coded subject folders, regularily emptying notebooks and organizing notebooks. Every student who had Dysgraphia were encouraged to be open about their disease rather than be embarrassed about it and this was done so that they can boldly face the situation rather than run away from it. The writing may be slow than the average person but the main aim should be that it is legible (Deborah Labovitz 2002). The computer that had speech and language recognition software was used to make sure that the child or the student was made to speak to the computer and the software had typed it down(Jack Adolph Nelson 1994). This was done to increase the confidence in the student. The computer has been used as tool for concentrating on writing and not as a tool for getting more knowledge about mistakes. The memory powers of the students were improved by games and this was done to keep that writing was not the only solution to very problem. The desk height, the posture of the child and the fit of the chair has been analyzed in very student situation and the computer or laptop has been used effectively. There are many Dyslexic people who had become famous in later stages of life like Albert Einstein, Actor Tom Cruise. There were many people who had Dysgraphic in early stages who had become good writers in later stages of life like writing plays and novels and so on(Deborah Kovacs 1996). Their hardships and the battles can be read out, shown and that can help the child or the student to think on a higher plane in life or in simple terms motivate them to live better. It can also instill the message that every person who has disability can come back to normal life. Conclusion Each student having Dysgraphia should be considered as separate individual. The strengths and weakness of the student should be done and training program should be done developed in meeting the strengths of the child. The sex of the student is an important factor and girl students has been found to be reacting to situations in a different manner than the boys and this is the one area that has to be studied further. The other next thing that has to be studied further is the implication of Dysgraphia on other disease on speech, listening skills, math skills and other disabled skills. The development of brain has to be studied further and the steps that should be taken to overcome this disease in later stages of life. For example a child who is having minor Dysgraphia in the form of visual spatial correction may be disguising it for log time and remedial measures will be tuned to overcome that situation. What are the steps that are needed to overcome that situation? This study was done to help the students overcome Dysgraphia in the early stages of life and further study in the later stages of life can be done. Reference Broderick "The drawing of Square and Diamond" Journal of Experimental Child Psychology .1987.Vol 43.pp.44-61. Deborah Labovitz."Struggling to get by" Ordinary miracles .2002.pp.90 Deborah Kovacs "Introduction”. Meet the Authors .1996pp.6. Jack Adolph Nelson."The use of computer in dysgraphia".The Disabled, the media, and the information age .1994.pp.135 Kathryn Stewart."Verbal spatial processing”. Helping a Child with Nonverbal Learning Disorder.2007. pp.82-88. Karlsdottir. "Problems in developing functional handwriting”, Perceptual and motor skills,2002.Vol 94.Pp.623-662. Matti-Zissi."Drawing performance in children with special learning disability”, Perceptual and motor skills. 1998.Vol.87.pp.487-497. Ronald D. Davis, Eldon M. Braun "Attention Deficit Disorder”. The gift of learning .2003.pp.6 Suzanne H. Stevens, "Dysgraphia".The LD child and the ADHD child. 1996. pp.6-10. Van Galen."Poor handwriting”. Acts Psychologia.1993.Vol82.pp.161-178. Read More