Occasionally we encounter students who are slow to grasp the basic concepts of English orthography; they have difficulty forming letters correctly and placing them in the proper positions. Young learners have to grasp the concept that letters of the alphabet can be "tall", "short" or "hanging down", and should be placed accordingly in order to make legible words. Compounding this difficulty is the fact that different book publishers use 3 (solid top and bottom with dotted center line) or 4 lines (solid baseline and dotted center, upper, and basement lines). As a consequence, slow learners will often write letters that float above or sag below their proper positions.

I feel that being oblivious to lines is one condition strongly related to dyslexia, since these students also spell words incorrectly, and transpose b, d, p, q, w, m, etc. I watch them grasp the pencil and write slowly, looking intently at the letters on the lines they want to copy, and then slowly placing their pencils randomly on basement lines, or center lines, meanwhile the correct example is right in front of them. I have to devote considerable one-on-one time with these kids, stopping them and nudging their pencil points back to the starting position every time they begin a new letter. For 1st and 2nd grade students, this type of intensive training is possible because the class might have many pages of trace and copy worksheets to keep them busy while slow learners and teachers work together at their own pace. However, if orthographic problems persist past 2nd grade--- you have a BIG problem. These students will increasingly fall behind on workbook assignments as the writing load increases, and they will start to fail writing tests and quizzes. You won't be able to give them individualized instruction in class because their classmates will be breezing through their work and become impatient with the slowpokes. Then the slow students might quit trying and commit themselves to failure.

I recommend that slow learners spend some time with the orthographic analog to "minimal pairs practice", a technique used in phonics and pronunciation training. I have created a PPT which makes students notice the difference between correct and abnormal placement of letters (4 line ruling). In addition to this PPT, you should have the students do more word shape puzzle exercises. The folder below contains a number of worksheets. Use them as a follow-up exercises to the PPT.