Dysgraphia is a disorder that effects writing. Here are some basic dysgraphia facts:
•More than just illegible handwriting
•Difficulty with expressing thoughts on paper
•Hands fatigue quickly when writing
•Writing is slow and laborious
•Has difficulty using paper correctly or challenges with writing in given text boxes or on the lines
•Papers torn or smudged from erasing
•Spelling accuracy
But let me tell you more about what dysgraphia is like for kids. Imagine if writing was so slow and tedious that by the time you wrote your first words you forgot the sentence you were writing. Then you had to start that entire thought over. And then, even worse, those first few words you did get written down, you had to erase to start over. Frustrating right?
With dysgraphia, a student’s written work may not reflect their understanding or ideas on the subject. They could probably spout out an entire paragraph but not be able to get that same paragraph down on paper.
What if everyone around you was finished writing a paragraph and you were still working on your first sentence? Not because you didn’t have the ideas of what to write, but because you could not get it down on paper fast enough.
Thinking back, I remember being in the classroom and having those few kids that turned in work I just could not read. It was smudged and looked crumpled up and barely legible. If I saw that now, knowing what dysgraphia is, I would have a different perspective on what that student might be going through. Now when I think about that work, I think about my own kid’s work. Both of them have dysgraphia. My oldest says when he looks at paper, even lined paper, it is confusing where to start writing. He has trouble fitting the letters on the lines or in text boxes. Understanding lettering spacing and how to start a new line are challenging. And this is something that the majority of us do automatically. He even had trouble understanding which side was the front and back of a paper so he would often start his writing on the back of the page.
