Learning Disabilities in Writing (Dysgraphia)

Learning disabilities in writing can involve the physical act of writing or the mental activity of comprehending information. Basic writing disorder refers to physical difficulty forming words and letters. An expressive writing disability indicates a struggle to organize thoughts on paper.

What Are the Symptoms?

How to Overcome Dyslexia

The three main points in overcoming dyslexia are learning from the specific to the general, articulation, and word analysis. In this blog post, I will discuss learning from the specific to the general.

From Specific to the General

For most of their K-12 education, students are taught primarily from the general to the specific. While this is effective for most of the student body, it can be quite frustrating for students with dyslexia. You see, after over 20 years of researching dyslexia and related learning concerns, I’ve discovered something. I found that the primary learning concern for learning different students is a lack of organization. To put it simply, we simply think too quickly. The resulting disorganization causes us to be like speeding trains turning toward a sharp curve – we go off the rails. 

Ask your learning different student this question: Have you found, in your area of great interest, that ideas fly around your head at light speed, but with little to no organization?

Most will answer yes!

Therefore, the task before us is to help our learning different students organize their minds. We do this by using writing as a measurable output. To do that, we must focus on the specific to the general.

How Does It Work?

“Why do this?” you might ask. Think of it this way. Let’s take one of the most important speeches of the twentieth century, JFK’s Let’s Go to the Moon speech. If we were to ask our learning different students, “What effect did JFK’s ‘Let’s Go to the Moon’ speech have on America?”, those students would most likely be quite frustrated.

What direction should they go? What point should they focus on? Their Advanced Placement student classmates generally love this great amount of freedom, but our learning different students need something to help them focus, a clear starting point. 

Now let’s examine a similar question, but from the specific to the general. First, we might ask our learning different students, “Why did JFK give his ‘Let’s Go to the Moon’ speech?” Then, we follow that with, “What motivated him?”

Now our learning different students have a solid starting point – not only why JFK gave the “Let’s Go to the Moon” speech, but what motivated him. The students have two questions, instead of one, to really focus their research. Once they find information on why JFK gave this speech, they can look for more detailed information on what motivated him.

This laser-focused question forces learning different students to concentrate on finding quality sources to answer their assigned questions. In doing so, this makes their writing tasks much easier.

Moving Forward

Does your child or student have learning disabilities? Well, if you would like to learn more about how you can help your learning difference child or student, check out our Facebook Classes! In these classes, we walk through tactics and strategies you can use to help improve their learning.