Your Therapy Source Magazine for Pediatric Therapists August 2016 Issue #86 | Página 11

TEACHING HANDWRITING TO STUDENTS WITH LEARNING
DISABILITIES

School based occupational therapists frequently evaluate and treat students with learning
disabilities especially including handwriting difficulties in some districts. Many school districts
are moving away from handwriting instruction although students are still required to submit
handwritten assignments. Children with learning disabilities may have slow, illegible
handwriting resulting in decreased written output. Students in early elementary grades tend to
have more issues with handwriting compared to the older grades. The skill of handwriting
includes postural stability, fine-motor movement, visual-motor coordination and orthographic
coding (committing letter names, shape, and sequence to memory). A problem solving
approach to handwriting may help teachers to add in extra instructional time during the current
busy schedules of today’s students.
Teaching Exceptional Children published suggestions for a problem solving approach to
handwriting instruction for elementary students with learning disabilities. (This problem
solving approach is not necessarily limited to handwriting instruction and in general therapists
tend to follow this approach for all functional skills.)

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