Jennie Sjursen - Episode 19
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[00:00:00] Jennie Sjursen: My child holds a pencil in this really weird way. I don't know how their hands don't cramp up. The writing is like this mashup of capitals and lower cases and spreads all over the paper. What's going on here? Should I be worried?
[00:00:18] Jennie Sjursen: I'm Jenny Sjursen, ex special educator term dyslexia interventionist. It wasn't so long ago that I too was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy education speak and everything in between.
[00:00:31] Jennie Sjursen: Fast forward after many, many hours of self-driven education, and you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice. Helping students from age six to 18, my specialties, working with a quote unquote difficult, almost always, student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexia into everyday language strategies and action steps.
[00:00:58] Jennie Sjursen: Before we dive in, can you do me a huge favor? Would you mind sending this episode or just sharing my podcast with three of your friends? I've been working really hard to put out valuable content to support parents with dyslexic children, and I wanna make sure it gets into the hands of the people that need it the most.
[00:01:16] Jennie Sjursen: So grab the link to this episode or podcast, text it to three friends, or you can just click the share button where you're listening to this podcast and send it that way. Whatever works for you, but I would be forever grateful. Thank you. Dysgraphia, have you heard about it? Many of my students with dyslexia also have dysgraphia.
[00:01:37] Jennie Sjursen: In fact, it's estimated that 10 to 33% of the population have an issue with handwriting. I often refer to dysgraphia as the misunderstood and overlooked diss. In the group. What do I mean by that? There is more than one disc disability. Some, you know, and some are more uncommon, like dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysphasia, dyspraxia, and our overlooked friend dysgraphia.
[00:02:05] Jennie Sjursen: The other discs are usually easily picked up by various standardized assessments. Dysgraphia is often missed, but could be picked up in the test of written language. Fourth edition towel four and subtest in the Woodcock Johnson four. And the Wyatt four. When testing for dysgraphia, the test should cover the following areas, find motor skills.
[00:02:26] Jennie Sjursen: How does the child hold the writing utensil and move it across the paper? Eye hand coordination. Et cetera. Writing mechanics, grammar, spelling, punctuation, thematics, word usage, and their ability to organize their thoughts and output them to paper. Oh, did you catch those last two? They're key, especially the last one.
[00:02:50] Jennie Sjursen: Dysgraphia is more than issues with fine motor skills when writing. It is also a deficit in written expression, the ability to organize thoughts and write cohesive paragraphs. I have to admit, when I first learned about dysgraphia, I thought it was primarily a fine motor issue that we noticed in the classroom and called in an OT for evaluation or consult.
[00:03:13] Jennie Sjursen: Nobody said anything about it being related to written expression. So let's take a step back and look at some of the common symptoms of dysgraphia. Awkward pencil grip can be almost like a death grip, odd position of the wrist or hand. Hand cramping, slow, laborious writing, mixing of upper and lowercase letters, irregular letter formation, size sequencing, or line placement, unorganized thought process when writing paragraphs.
[00:03:43] Jennie Sjursen: Difficulty with written expression, needing extended time to complete writing tasks, avoiding all writing tasks. So let's dive in further. Cheryl l Dotterer in her book handwriting, brain Body Disconnect states that there are seven types of dysgraphia, and I'm gonna put a link to her book in the show notes.
[00:04:03] Jennie Sjursen: But the seven types she identifies are information processing dysgraphia, visual spatial dysgraphia. Motor dysgraphia, memory, dysgraphia, word formation, dysgraphia, sentence formation, dysgraphia, and paragraph formation dysgraphia. So let's take a closer look at each of them. Information processing.
[00:04:26] Jennie Sjursen: Dysgraphia encompasses all aspects of writing at the fundamental levels. Mechanics, language and cognitive. A person with information processing dysgraphia typically has impaired motor skills, illegible handwriting, and poor language skills. Their working memory impacts and causes confusion with letter formation, sizing, and sequencing.
[00:04:49] Jennie Sjursen: Interestingly, they tend to have great copy skills and work well with visual cues. They also tell oral stories in explicit detail. The next two types are what most people think of when they hear dysgraphia, visual, spatial dysgraphia and motor dysgraphia. Visual spatial dysgraphia occurs when there is a body brain disconnect in the, in the area of visual, spatial, or visual perception, the processing of visual input.
[00:05:17] Jennie Sjursen: People with visual spatial dysgraphia have a hard time determining where to place the letters on the paper. They tend to have the most illegible handwriting of all the dysgraphia types. They tend to have difficulty with drawing, coloring, and painting, and accurately creating simple shapes, which makes for poor writing speed.
[00:05:35] Jennie Sjursen: I fluency and a dislike for handwriting. On the other hand, they tend to be able to follow rhythmic music patterns, have fine motor skills comparable to their peers. And have age appropriate oral narration and spelling skills. Motor dysgraphia. This type of dysgraphia is as it sounds, issues and fine motor skills, eye hand coordination, motor clumsiness, and hand strength.
[00:06:00] Jennie Sjursen: Not only do students with motor dysgraphia have an issue with handwriting, but you may also see them display different physical behaviors. They hug the wall when they walk down the hallway. Have difficulty climbing playground equipment. Can't stand on one foot, difficulty managing utensils and tend to lean forward onto their desk or slouch in their chairs.
[00:06:21] Jennie Sjursen: These are the students who may have difficulty crossing the midline. On the positive side, their spelling and ability to draw shapes, color, and paint remains intact. Researchers have also found people with motor dysgraphia have strengths in auditorium visual memory, the ability to verbally re respond when showing knowledge and age appropriate spelling.
[00:06:43] Jennie Sjursen: Memory dysgraphia. This type of dysgraphia is an overlap of visual, spatial, and motor weakness. The greatest impact on a person with memory dysgraphia can come from their working memory deficits, or lack of recall. They are the ones who can't remember the difference between B and Ds. They tend to have many letter and number reversals, frequently erase their work to the point of ripping the paper.
[00:07:08] Jennie Sjursen: They know the letter wasn't right. But not how to fix it. Their spelling is horrible and they can show low muscle tone, but again, their working memory causes them the most grief. Their motor skills and visual spatial skills are intact. People with memory dysgraphia tend to be perfectionists. They like to read and have good oral language skills, written expression skills, not so much.
[00:07:33] Jennie Sjursen: Students with this type of dysgraphia tend to fall through the cracks they can read well. So teachers think their writing will come in time and their sensory motor skills are intact. So the therapists often don't qualify them for services. Unfortunately, their delays in working memory often creates anxiety, frustration, and refusal to participate, which in turn gets them labeled as lazy, when in fact they are deeply engaged in survival and coping skills.
[00:08:01] Jennie Sjursen: Word formation Dysgraphia. This is basically a lack of understanding of the basics of words and syllable connections. They struggle to write letters on paper, write like they're in slow motion, or often have letter reversal, and their spelling is dependent on their phonetic knowledge and memory. Most students with word formation, dysgraphia, read on grade level, have good comprehension skills and oral language.
[00:08:25] Jennie Sjursen: They are great storytellers. Sentence formation. Dysgraphia is a weakness in understanding sentence structure, syntax and basic grammar skills. The mechanics of writing, organizing, writing down their thoughts and papers, overwhelming. They tend to have strong visual and auditory skills. These are the kids who always want to do a PowerPoint or mock podcast as the final assignment.
[00:08:50] Jennie Sjursen: In my opinion, many of the weaknesses shown in sentence formation dysgraphia are also present due to poor writing instruction. The how to of teaching writing is not often covered or covered in depth in teacher training courses. People often make the mistake that if you can read, you can write.
[00:09:08] Jennie Sjursen: Unfortunately that is not true. Like reading. It doesn't just happen by frequent exposure. It has to be taught. Not one of my students could identify a noun versus a verb when I first started working with them, and don't even get me started on parts of a sentence. Paragraph formation dysgraphia. People with paragraph formation dysgraphia have a difficult time in the conversational stage of writing.
[00:09:33] Jennie Sjursen: They struggle with adding more details or facts and hate graphic organizers. They need more support than a graphic organizer can provide, and they need syntax and grammar support. Sentence and paragraph formation. DYS graphics read well and are often good oral spellers, as well as being quite articulate.
[00:09:54] Jennie Sjursen: I know I didn't go over the different supports and services for the different types of dysgraphia. Hmm. Perhaps I'll do that in another episode. But for right now, if you suspect your child has dysgraphia, you are going to want to consult with various service providers. OTs, SLPs and dyslexia or reading specialist and be diligent.
[00:10:15] Jennie Sjursen: Dysgraphia is not just about physical fine motors deficits. It's also about the ability to organize thoughts and use words to convey meaningful information on paper. To me, that's the biggest takeaway. Dysgraphia also involves thought organization and written expression. Nobody talks about that. And they should.
[00:10:37] Jennie Sjursen: If you have any further questions about dysgraphia, please feel free to sneak into my inbox. We'd also love your input. What would you like to hear from us in the future? Is there a topic we haven't covered yet you really wanna learn more about? Or do you have a pressing need and you're not really sure how to handle it or move forward?
[00:10:52] Jennie Sjursen: Send us a DM on Instagram or drop us an [email protected]. That's J E N N I e, literacy untangled.com. We can't wait to hear from you. Until next time. Bye-bye.
[00:11:10] Jennie Sjursen: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Literacy Untangled. If you loved this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation or share your takeaways, head on over to our Instagram at literacy untangled and comment on your favorite part.
[00:11:30] Jennie Sjursen: I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye.
