Dysgraphia

Sample Introductory Statement

Determination of Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is a written language disorder in serial production of strokes to form a handwritten letter. This involves not only motor skills but also language skills—finding, retrieving and producing letters, which is a subword-level language skill. The impaired handwriting may interfere with spelling and/or composing, but individuals with only dysgraphia do not have difficulty with reading (Berninger, Richards, & Abbott, 2015).

A review of recent evidence indicates that dysgraphia is best defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder manifested by illegible and/or inefficient handwriting due to difficulty with letter formation. This difficulty is the result of deficits in graphomotor function (hand movements used for writing) and/or storing and retrieving orthographic codes (letter forms) (Berninger, 2015). Secondary consequences may include problems with spelling and written expression. The difficulty is not solely due to lack of instruction and is not associated with other developmental or neurological conditions that involve motor impairment. 

Do the data show the following characteristics of dysgraphia?                       

Physical aspects of writing/Graphomotor ability: letter formation, size and proportion, spacing, slant, alignment, line quality, organization on page, pencil grip, frequent erasures, stray marks, stop/stuck marks, general legibility   

Spelling: spelling errors, spells the same word in different ways, confuses spelling rules

Orthography: storing/organizing/retrieving letter and word forms, forgets how letters look, confuses letters with similar appearance (e.g. n for h), misreads little words in text (e.g. were for where), transposes letters when reading or writing (e.g. on instead of no), difficulty copying from a book or board to paper, weak spelling, weak naming/recognition fluency

Writing fluency: word count, speed

Written expression: sentence composition, essay composition, theme development, organization, grammar, mechanics, vocabulary

Sample Dysgraphia Worksheet

The worksheet provided is a sample. Please note it is not an exhaustive list. In order to use the example, you will need to:

Fully open the document > File > Make a Copy

How can the terms dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia be used in the IEP?

• A student with dyslexia would likely be described in the IEP as having a specific learning disability in basic reading skills and/or reading fluency with the condition of dyslexia. Another way to describe a student with dyslexia in the IEP or evaluation documents could read: Josie has dyslexia, a specific learning disability in basic reading skills, with primary impairments in single word decoding, orthographic awareness, and rapid naming.

• A student with dysgraphia would likely be described in the IEP as having a specific learning disability in written expression with the condition of dysgraphia; another way to describe a student with dysgraphia could read: Brant has dysgraphia and demonstrates significant impairments in handwriting and written production.

• A student with dyscalculia would likely be described in the IEP as having a specific learning disability in math calculation or math problem-solving. A statement to describe a student with dyscalculia could read: Diego has dyscalculia, a specific learning disability in math calculation; he struggles to solve basic math facts with adequate speed and accuracy.

Supporting Links