First, I want to tell you they are here from Diagnostic Learning Services. So Lori is the founder and executive director and Abby is the director of assessment. And we were really looking to go deep into testing, which is their area of expertise. We haven't done one of these expert webinars specifically around testing and how to get your child tested and what the different tests might be. It's a question we get asked a lot, so we're really excited to learn tonight from the two of them all about testing for dysgraphia and what parents need to know.
So with that, welcome to Lori and Abby, and you guys can take it away as we go through the webinar. I think that you can use the Q&A. We will make sure that is enabled.
So put your questions into the Q&A, and then we will be taking some time at the end to answer them. perfect thank you for having us thank you yeah we're very excited i'll let you share your slides perfect okay i'm lori and and this is abby and thank you guys for having us today we're super excited to share um what we know and what we do every day when it comes to assessing um children and adults for a variety of learning disabilities obviously today we're going to focus on writing Our goal today is just to kind of walk you through the process of what an evaluation tests for. If you have any other specific questions, please don't hesitate to drop them into the Q&A.
I am going to pull up our slideshow, so give me one second, and I am going to, we're going to go ahead and get started. So like I said, my name is Lori, this is Abby, we're going to just jump right in. So Abby, I want to let you get started. Okay. So just to talk about the term, actually, learning disability, you know, throughout the nation, there are varieties of terms people use, learning disability, learning difference, learning challenge, learning difficulties.
But when we're really talking about schools, the schools are. talking about it being called a specific learning disability or SLD. And an individual has a learning disability, typically with average to above average intelligence or overall ability, and they have a deficit or a weakness in one or more academic areas. Also, a learning disability or a specific learning disability typically involves a weakness in one or more of your major cognitive processes, such as your verbal comprehension skills or verbal reasoning skills, your processing speed, your working memory, your visual spatial skills, and then a weakness in an academic area, such as basic reading, written expression, math calculations, math fluency. There's actually, these are the specific areas that schools are looking for.
If they're evaluating your child for a specific learning disability, you can have a specific learning disability in basic reading, reading fluency, reading comprehension, math calculations, math problem solving, written expression, oral expression, and listening comprehension. So. Learning disabilities, as we all know, also can include, and they should include, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and even ADHD. Okay? And I did, I forgot about my next slide.
And that really comes from the IDA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, helps delineate and define those areas of specific learning disability. Some of this, I apologize if I'm being a little bit repetitive or getting ahead of myself. When we talk about looking for underachievement in an area to part of the evaluation for a specific learning disability, that underachievement, we're really looking to see is the individual performing below grade level expectations? below where they should be for their age range, and also despite having adequate instruction. That's important.
That is very important and that is something actually in public schools they're making sure to rule out Adequate instruction. They're even looking at attendance. You know, if a child has had a great deal of a great number of absences and they don't feel like they have been in school enough to have received appropriate instruction, they might say, well, that's an exclusionary factor. And we're not going to identify your student with a specific learning disability. They also look at language factors, cultural factors, socioeconomics.
factors, things like that. And then with a specific learning disability in written expression, we're really looking at an individual having difficulty expressing their thoughts in writing clearly in an organized manner with logical flow, with appropriate grammar. So really, we're going to get into the nitty gritty of what schools are looking at as far as specific learning disability in written expression versus the term dysgraphia and what dysgraphia, what we're looking at for dysgraphia. Now, some individuals with a specific learning disability in written expression may also have difficulty with the physical aspects of handwriting.
forming their letters, using adequate spacing, writing on the lines, staying within the margins, etc. And then dysgraphia defined really is a written language disorder in serial production of strokes. So in difficulty with the sequencing of the strokes needed to make a handwritten letter.
Not only does it involve motor skills, you know, a lot of people think that it's only strictly related to your fine motor skills and fine motor control. It is actually still considered kind of a language-based disorder also in that the individual could have difficulty with retrieving or producing letters, retrieving, you know, thinking of a sound, retrieving the letter that goes with that sound, and then being able to write it on a piece of paper. And then the impaired handwriting may interfere with spelling and or composing.
But individuals with only dysgraphia do not have difficulty with reading. And there is, you know, we hear a lot of parents call and think, well, my child has dyslexia, so I think they probably have dysgraphia also. Or I want to look at all of the dyses, dysgraphia, dyslexia, dyscalculia.
Because they think that they're all related because of the dis part of the word. And actually, it is a myth. And the dis, D-Y-S, comes from the Latin root difficulty with. And so that's the only thing they have in common.
You know, dysgraphia is difficulty with the graphomotor aspects of writing, whereas dyslexia is difficulty with language. And. dyscalculia is difficulty with calculations, things like that. And also, interestingly, a recent review of the research regarding dysgraphia, they're saying that it's best defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder manifested by illegible or inefficient handwriting due to difficulty with letter formation.
And then the difficulty is a result of deficits in hand movements used for writing, which is called graphomotor function, and or storing and retrieving orthographic codes, those letter forms. And then, of course, secondary consequences may include problems with spelling and with written expression. So here, again, are some more of the characteristics of dyslexia that we look for. I mean, just, oh, I do that all the time, dysgraphia, see?
They sounded like. Yep. with dysgraphia that we look for when we're doing an assessment.
Just these aren't necessarily going to come from a standardized test. These are more observational. You know, how do they form their letters?
Do they have a lot of erasures and crossouts? What's their spacing like between their letters and their words? Do they have a lot of reversals beyond the early stages of writing? It's really important to understand that BD reversals, 7-9 reversals are really developmentally appropriate.
through usually the end of second grade. So, you know, that's expected, but past that point, if there are still reversals with letters or numbers, then that's something we want to definitely take into consideration. How do they hold their pencil? What kind of pressure do they put on their pencil?
We have some kids that it's like, they're barely holding onto the pencil while others they're squeezing it so tight there, you know, you can see the redness in their hand. And then the slow writing or copying with legible or illegible handwriting. So if they're writing fluency is very slow or they have a very difficult time copying, not just from the board to the paper, just from one place to another, whether it's from the top of the page or from another piece of paper, even if it's legible and it's slow, that's something we want to take into consideration.
Looking at all of that, some additional consequences we're going to see is difficulty with that unedited spelling and a low volume of written output. So a student that struggles with all of these characteristics, they're going to come up with the shortest, most concise way to put their thoughts on paper because making it long and wordy is a lot of work and it hurts and it's hard to read. So they're going to come up with the most concise way to get their message on paper and they're probably always going to be done first. Limited, very limited output where they could sit there and tell you a million details and tell you a story orally with, you know, great elaboration and detail when it comes to getting it down on paper.
They're doing probably the bare minimum. And we'll do that a lot of times. We'll ask the student, well, tell me what you're going to write.
Let's talk about it and see what ideas they have and what ideas they've generated. And then we'll say, OK, let's get that written down and then we'll compare it to what they've written on the paper. So that difference in their verbal output versus their written output. And that a lot of those characteristics and that data that we were just looking at, it is very subjective, which I know that is very frustrating to parents, to teachers, to evaluators, to everyone.
But, you know, Lori and I, you know, when we're evaluating a student. we really do try to look at a preponderance of evidence and really analyze their writing and watch them write and look at letter formation and look at what's typical for their age. You know, a lot of parents get really concerned with, you know, spit, you know, huge, huge letters and messy handwriting and whatnot, when it might be pretty typical for a kindergartner or first grader, things like that. So, um, Evaluating a specific learning disability in written expression and dysgraphia.
We believe, and the schools follow this same principle, that it has to start with a full comprehensive evaluation by certified individuals. So you can't have your child's tutor evaluate them for dysgraphia. We are trained.
We are educational diagnosticians. In some states, it's... a school psychologist or a psychometrist, but we are specifically trained in administering standardized tests, evaluating all the data, informal data, formal data, and really determining if there is a learning disability going on.
And we're looking for that evidence of dysgraphia or seeing if they meet that diagnostic criteria for a specific learning disability in written expression. And of course, I think in addition to all the formal testing we do, the informal data is very important as well. You know, we want to get parent input and how their child started out with, you know, coloring. You know, did they hate coloring? Did they have a hard time staying in the lines and scribbling?
I mean, and... they weren't into drawing or, you know, using crowns in preschool. We also want teacher input and teacher data and, and some work samples because in a, in a testing session, there's not a ton of writing you can get out of a kiddo, especially if they are struggling with writing.
So it's really good to look at all that, all that you can get. And then it's. When we choose tests, there are so many different types of standardized tests out there.
I'm sure some of you guys have heard of, you know, something called the WISC or the Woodcock Johnson, you know, Stanford-Binet, the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. We make sure to choose these standardized tests that are considered valid and reliable. Valid meaning they actually are truly measuring what they are intended to measure. and research has been used and they've been developed over time and they're reliable meaning that you're going to get pretty much the same results from one week to the next. That's what we mean when we say those tests are reliable.
We also, in addition to them being standardized, where we follow very specific standardized procedures and administering these tests, they're also called norm reference tests. So that means that we are comparing that child, that individual. to same age peers across the nation. So the test developers of these tests we're using have created a norm, a cross-section of the population of the U.S.
So many different people of different ages, races, ethnicities, all of those different factors. And then of course looking at multiple measures of writing abilities. And then also I think it's important to make sure that we're using tests that align well with the student's age. And if they are a second language learner, we need to make sure that we're choosing a test that doesn't have a ton of language and really complex and wordy, wordy instructions. So that is something we look at the student's native language.
We make sure the test is administered that way. And then beyond looking at identifying dysgraphia, we're looking beyond standardized assessments, as I said, with their educational history, early language experiences, handwriting, spelling, all of those difficulties. And then, of course, the informal data that I mentioned before.
I think the informal data is so important. I think that's like Abby had talked about earlier, the preponderance of evidence. the standardized scores are helpful and it gives us an idea of where the student falls compared to their peers but the informal data is really important to take into consideration too and i think as we go through this and we talk about a little bit about you know the the question of well how come my child didn't qualify for services through special education i think that's kind of where the breakdown happens because everything that qualifies you for those services are really based on standardized test scores.
So we'll talk a little bit about why there is that discrepancy. Go ahead. Okay.
And of course, when we are evaluating for a specific learning disability in written expression or dysgraphia, we are making sure to assess letter formation, handwriting, word or sentence dictation, both timed and untimed. their ability to copy text, their written expression. So actually, you know, looking at, we're scoring their content, their content, exactly. Spelling, writing fluency, both for accuracy and fluency or speed or rate.
And then we also look at their cognitive processes or what you can also think of. their different intellectual abilities and processes. I think that the timed versus untimed is really important because I've had a lot of teachers, parents tell me that teachers will say, well, you know, when they take their time and go slow, their handwriting is a little bit better. And I'm sure it is. But in a classroom setting, day to day, you can't do that.
You still have to finish your tasks. within a timely manner you don't have all day. And so the speed that they can get their writing out in a legible manner is important.
So the timed versus untimed is a big part of that. So I think it's important to talk a little bit. We wanted to kind of share with you guys a little bit about the different areas that we evaluate and how those areas or how by evaluating those areas, we're learning more about how they process language and how those areas impact their writing, whether it's looking at just a scrapio or written expression, a lot of these are going to cross over and you're going to see both.
But these are areas that everybody should assess. Right. And excuse me, I just thought of one thing.
I think it is important before we dive deeper into all of the areas that we're evaluating and how they relate. We were talking about standardized tests and standardized test scores. And I think.
something that probably a lot of people want to know. Parents and even educators in the school sometimes don't understand, this child struggles so much, why did they not qualify for services? So schools are very bound by specific scores. So for example, an 85 or below, on a standard score is considered a weakness or below average.
The average range in most school districts, if they're following what the federal laws are saying, they're looking at really 85 to 115 as the average range. We actually sometimes look at you know, what we call those shady 80s, you know, like low average abilities. And an 88, you still could be really struggling even with an 88. But schools, they really are hard set on the tests they administered. And if the child did not score below this number, then it's not truly a weakness. And they also are looking at, is there a pattern of strengths and weaknesses?
And I'm not going to get way too much into how we are told to identify specific learning disabilities in the public schools, but there's different methods that are being used out there. But the most common one is that they're saying that the child should demonstrate a pattern of strengths and weaknesses. in their cognitive abilities, and strengths and weaknesses within their academic abilities. So there are times where we'll see an evaluation come from a school where the child didn't have any weaknesses in any of their cognitive processing areas, but they did have a weakness in an academic area.
But the school will say they don't have a specific learning disability because They didn't have any weaknesses or, you know, they didn't have a pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Whereas, again, in the private sector, we're able to. We have more flexibility.
We have more flexibility. We follow best practices. But again, we're looking at a preponderance of evidence. If you say he's struggling with writing, I see him struggling with writing, struggling with the seven different things out of nine things.
Then, you know, we might say dysgraphia. An 88. is going to be a below average score. And I think, and that is, that is very true.
They are very much black and white and the scores have to fit in a specific box in a specific way. And when they don't, that's where I think we get the most frustration from parents. Like we did the testing and they, but we know there's something wrong. And I am a firm, firm believer in the mom gut. Your mom gut knows there's something there, there probably is.
And so like Abby said, you know, that a lot of kids get kicked back. because they don't hit that, you know, benchmark of below 85, which seems silly, but in, in all honesty, I mean, in fairness to them, there has to be a cutoff because they have to have some consistency. So I understand why it's done.
We just don't always agree with the results. And it's frustrating too, because they'll say they don't qualify for services and then they don't do anything else. There's no help.
There's no help. Yeah. And so now this child is just left in the classroom to struggle. When we talk about those cognitive processing areas, that pattern of strengths and weaknesses, and these are some of the areas we just wanted to kind of talk a little bit about some of the areas that we assess to do a thorough evaluation and how these different areas impact writing.
So short-term working memory is a big one, and it's important. It's important when within the writing process, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about the retrieval of those codes of whether it's how the letter looks and how the... you know, that sound, what letter goes with that sound, but also then that word, how does that word look?
And can I retrieve those patterns or those strings of letters from my memory? And how quickly can I do it? And so that's where we get into looking at short-term and working memory.
And so everything from spelling to constructing a sentence to your word choices and how you plan and organize your writing are all impacted by short-term and working memory. So when we're evaluating a student, We want to look at those skills and see where they are. Are they adequate?
Are they average, above average? Or is this a student that really struggles in these areas and we can see how it's impacting their ability to get their thoughts on paper? Anything else?
All right. That's a big one. And then this this is a big one for looking at writing dysgraphia, orthographic processing, which is. an individual's ability to recognize and manipulate the letters and spelling patterns in language.
It's related to understanding the visual representations of words, including letter recognition, sound correspondence, the rules governing spelling, word formation, and really I am seeing more and more states have some guidelines to look at dysgraphia. And when we are looking at dysgraphia, this is something very important that we need to be looking at. Is there orthographic processing?
So spelling, for example, orthographic processing plays a crucial role in spelling. So if a child is really struggling with recognizing those letters and putting them in their sequence, they, you know, are struggling with writing and they're struggling to get those words out, retrieving those letters, applying those spelling patterns. You know, you might even see major important sounds left out of a word in these kiddos. Letters, letters, the right letters in the wrong order.
Or the right letters in the wrong order. Exactly. word choice, you know, being able to think of the right word to convey the meaning and the intent of what I'm thinking about. So orthographic processing skills really enables kids to access and retrieve those appropriate words from their brain, from that language part of their brain, and then they can quickly recognize, recall spelling of words, which of course will enhance their ability to... access that vocabulary, choose better words, you know, express their thoughts well, even elaborate.
And then orthographic processing also can affect grammar and syntax. It's related, it contributes to the understanding and application of grammar rules and syntax rules. And so as kids develop those orthographic skills, they become more really adept at recognizing and using correct grammatical structures, punctuation marks, capitalization, verb, subject-verb agreement, exactly. And then with editing and revising, orthographic processing is definitely essential in that part of the writing process. So individuals with well-developed orthographic processing skills They can identify correct spelling errors, punctuation mistakes, grammatical inconsistencies in their written work.
They can go back and read their work and catch those mistakes and spot them and identify them. Processing speed is something that we assess with every student. This is going to have an impact again across all academic areas, but when we're looking at writing, especially with dysgraphia, we're looking at writing speed.
somebody who struggles with processing speed or tends to have a slower processing speed, their writing process is going to be a lot slower. Kind of the whole process, right? Not just the physical act of handwriting, but that retrieval of the information, remembering what it is I want to say. It really, and again, it can also affect the editing and revising, like we talked about earlier, the speed that they can edit it.
And, you know, if you're going too fast or too slow, you're going to miss mistakes that you might've made. So processing speed is it's like I said, it's very important. It really does help the student hold that thought in their mind while they work without losing it. If that, you know, if you're writing very slowly, the thought disappears and then you erase and start over.
And so we want to assess processing speed for every student, because, again, this is going to be something that a child that either has really fast processing speed or slower. it's going to impact their ability to get their thoughts on paper. Okay. Visual processing. We look at visual processing.
Sometimes it's called visual spatial skills and visual processing really is related to dysgraphia in that with, with weak visual processing skills, you might not be able to perceive. or distinguish between differences between letters and how they look, which can lead to difficulties in reproducing the correct forms, the shapes, resulting in that illegible distorted handwriting. This is where those kids where we talked about letter reversals beyond the early stages of writing, B, D, P, Q, numbers.
Oftentimes, it's a result of some visual processing difficulties. Visual processing also involves your hand-eye coordination, which is very important to handwriting. And so if you struggle with visual processing, it makes it very difficult to guide your hand movements and to, you know, look at how a letter, you know, you start at the bottom and go up and then around and move around.
And then visual processing is affecting your editing and proofreading skills because you need to be able to scan your work. And again, pick up on those inconsistencies, recognize those visual errors that you would be able to see if you can adequately perceive and process visual information. You know, Abby and I have become, I feel like pretty.
pretty or pretty knowledgeable in the area of visual processing that a lot of our students that we've diagnosed with dysgraphia also sometimes have a visual processing disorder that's impacting their writing and so we've worked very closely with some of the optometrists in our area to really you know become as as knowledgeable as we can about it but we have referred several students to see them for an evaluation because you know this is something that there might be something going on visually that can be addressed. So visual processing for us kind of for in our day-to-day life goes hand in hand with dysgraphia. We see it. Not everybody, not everybody has one that has the other, but more often than not. And I do want to add that schools do evaluate visual processing and visual spatial skills as part of their full evaluations.
However, In our experience, correct me if I'm misspeaking, the majority of evaluators in public schools are not knowledgeable about visual processing disorders, which even if a lot of parents, you know, they will take their child to an optometrist to figure out, you know, if they're struggling with reading or with writing, they want to rule out any vision issues, or the teacher might encourage you to rule out any visual issues. visual issues, vision. A regular optometrist does not always pick up on visual processing disorders. We refer to mostly developmental optometrists or optometrists that are trained in visual processing disorders and vision therapy. So, you know, if you suspect that your child, if they have very low visual processing scores, in their testing that the school did and you're seeing reversals beyond those early stages of writing and really inconsistent spacing between words and letters and letters floating up above the line and difficulties a lot of things that look like dysgraphia you know it may be dysgraphia and visual processing deficit or visual processing disorder or You know, if they say the handwriting is not that bad and their letter formation is not that poor or their spacing is OK, but you're seeing reversals, you know, reach out to somebody that might know more about visual processing disorders.
And we're going to share our email addresses as well. And so you guys can always contact us for more information there. One of the things here that we didn't touch on is just the being able to create.
mental images and visualize. We have a lot of students that have a hard time visualizing something. You know, we'll ask them when they've read a story, did you play a movie in your head? And they'll say no.
And asking them, do you ever do that? No, I don't even know how. And when you're going to write a story, it's really hard to write a story when you can't picture something, whether it's the story or the words that you want to spell. So that Ability to visualize is very important in the writing process and really hard to measure. Even letters to be able to picture it in your mind's eye.
All right. Fluid reasoning. So fluid reasoning is really, I describe it as your problem solving skills. How well do you problem solve? And while there's not a direct connection necessarily with fluid reasoning directly to dysgraphia, you need a lot of problem solving when it comes to writing.
You need to be able to generate your ideas and you need to be able to problem solve through your paper or through your paragraph and make decisions about what's going to come first, being able to sequence the tasks or the ideas in a cohesive manner. You need to have, honestly, critical thinking skills. And I feel like everything has revising and editing because you need all of these skills to be able to go back through a paragraph, a sentence or.
five-page paper and edit and revise it and be able to catch the mistakes, identify any weak spots, find, you know, suggest, be able to come up with ideas on your own on how to improve it. Um, so the, the problem solving piece is very important to the. to the writing process and to how your message comes across on paper. Even logical flow.
You know, we tend to see some sometimes kids with written expression difficulties where their story just doesn't make sense. Or, you know, the first sentence kind of goes with the second and then they stray way off. So that is really related to that fluid reasoning and problem solving. Okay. So we also assess an area that is called crystallized intelligence on some test batteries.
Some other test batteries that we use call it your verbal comprehension skills, essentially, you know, vocabulary, language development, verbal reasoning skills, your ability to listen and comprehend, access acquired general knowledge, things like that. So with dysgraphia. It's not really clearly related to your verbal comprehension skills.
However, with the writing process and written expression, you have to have a rich vocabulary. So you have to have good vocabulary and language development to be able to come up with the words to put in your writing. And if you have weak verbal comprehension skills and weak vocabulary, it's, you know, we're getting again.
very limited output and sentences that don't convey the child's ideas and their meaning and don't make sense. And it's hard for them to organize again, their ideas coherently. They tend to use a lot of the same words.
They have trouble coming up with synonyms or good descriptor words, good adjectives. That's true. Yes.
Oh, long-term memory. Long-term memory. When we talk about long-term retrieval, which is one of the areas that we do assess for, it really is being able to grab that information from your long-term memory fluently, retrieve it fluently, and bring it forward. So obviously back to the spelling and orthographic retrieval that we talked about earlier, being able to retrieve those orthographic patterns, your spelling patterns, the letter formations, things like that, that's all part of your long-term memory process.
being able to retrieve the words that you want to use. You know, when you're writing and you get stuck, like what's that word? What's that word? If you have a hard time retrieving that information, it's going to really slow your writing down.
You end up using another word or the same word. It impacts your grammar and how you structure your sentences, how you organize your content. And then just the retrieval of those strategies that you've learned as far as planning your papers or paragraphs or sentences.
organizing them, and then again, editing and revising your work. So that long-term retrieval piece is very important when we look at the writing process. And it's always interesting to see kids that are really, really good at this. And then those ideas just flow so much faster and so much more fluently. Okay.
This is a big one. And we really believe that executive functioning skills. are related to so many tasks, so many, all of your academic areas, executive functioning and attention kind of go hand in hand are interrelated. So your executive functioning skills, your ability to plan and organize, to think and plan out, you know, writing involves thinking of so many different things.
So Thinking about a dysgraphic child, they have to think about what the letter is, the sound that I want to make, the spelling pattern. How did they teach me to write that letter again? How do I put them all together?
Now I have to organize it and put it in the right order and use the writing line. Even with expressing their ideas, you're thinking about organizing all those different ideas. floating around in your brain and putting them into a coherent logical flow that support those ideas.
These are the kids that often will leave words out. They get so hung up on thinking about how do I write these letters and put them together to form a word that by the time they get to the next word, it's like they've forgotten and they ended up leaving words out of their sentences. Abby and I.
In the interest of full disclosure, both are diagnosed with ADHD, or both medicated for ADHD. I can tell you personally that the writing process has always been very difficult for me because of the executive function that it causes or requires. Thank you. See, word retrieval. I can tell you something most of the time, but if you ask me to write it, I will stare at a blank piece of paper or a blank screen thinking, where am I going to start?
I don't know where to start. What order should this go in? What information should I include?
Is this important? Is this not important? And we find that a lot of individuals with attention difficulties who have weak executive functioning, they really struggle to get their ideas on paper. And again, they'll procrastinate that writing task for as long as they possibly can because it overwhelms them. And so, you know, we talk a lot about this with our students who have ADHD and adults, ADHD and adults.
and strategies on how to sort of overcome that analysis paralysis piece, because the writing process in itself is very daunting. And then if you pile dysgraphia on top of that, where the writing is hard, it hurts my hand, you can't read it anyway, why bother that you can just add that to the list of things that people with ADHD or executive functioning issues struggle with. And then attention and focus.
Of course, you know, you have to be able to sustain your attention long enough to get all of those words out again, legibly, correctly spelled, letters formed correctly, using, you know, the right vocabulary, cohesively. And so attention and focus is important for writing, being able to avoid distractions. You know, when you're in the middle of a story and not what we call squirrel off into, oh, that made me think of, oh, this little boy that I saw yesterday on a skateboard. And then their story kind of ends up going off on a tangent.
So attention and focus is very important for the demands of written expression. Putting it all together. So, you know, when we take all of this information, you know, the informal data, the standardized testing, we want to know, are these difficulties this student is having, are they resulting from a deficit in any of those graphomotor functions, storing and retrieving letters?
Are they unexpected for their age or relation to their same age peers or grade peers, despite having adequate instruction in the classroom? So this is kind of where we get into, can you have a look, can you have a learning disability written expression and not be dysgraphic? Sure. Can you be dysgraphic and not have a learning disability and written expression? That's the big one.
And I think that's where we find the biggest struggles because we've had students that have had amazing content. Can't read it, or I can barely read it. I have to read it to me, but the content is great.
So Their written expression is very strong, but the handwriting, not so much. And because of that, they really do require some accommodations because a lot of teachers aren't going to take the time to try to read it or to allow them to read it to them. And so that's where the breakdown comes in. So you can absolutely have dysgraphia and not a learning disability and written expression or vice versa. Oftentimes the dysgraphia is going to impact your.
content. That is what leads to that learning disability and written expression, but it also can be the frustration point when it doesn't. So you can have one without the other. They do tend to come as a package very often. And going back to that, you know, public schools and looking at standard scores and cutoffs, if they're not looking at dysgraphia.
And if they are not assessing all of the characteristics of dysgraphia and looking at a preponderance of evidence, and they're just giving a standardized test that is measuring their written expression skills and the child scores, you know, above average in written expression, then they're going to say they don't meet criteria for a specific learning disability in written expression. And they may not pay any attention to the... the illegibility, the, you know, the difficulty in reading the child's writing.
Yeah, if they're not measuring the orthographic processing and, you know, other areas. Looking at letter formation, spacing, unedited written spelling, writing on the line, using the margins, all of those things. So unfortunately, it is frustrating depending, you know, what state you're in, what district you're in. They're not always evaluating.
and really looking at dysgraphia as its own entity and disability. So, you know, we wanted our talk today to focus mostly on the assessment, but it would be a disservice if we didn't just cover a few of our favorite recommendations and accommodations that we typically recommend for students, whether we're looking at the written expression piece, dysgraphia, a combination of both. You know, breaking those longer assignments into smaller pieces is a big one.
You know, like we talked about a second ago, the overwhelm of this is too much. I have to write 10 sentences. I'm going to be here all night.
I'm going to be able to do it. Helping break, you know, breaking it down into one or two at a time, taking a break can make all the difference in the world. Graphic organizers or a way to get those ideas from the head to the paper, you know, in an outline form just to help with that organization.
We're big fans of graphic organizers. My favorite recommendation is allowing them to use voice to text, especially when they have to write a paragraph or a story. Let them talk it out. Hey, you know what you have to write about, you know, Africa.
I want you to show me everything, you know, and I'm going to let the computer type it. And then we're going to get it from your head. We're going to purge, get it out. Now it's all in front of me.
Now I can see it. It's so much easier for me to organize it. Now, when it's all up here, jumbled in with the thousands of other things that are in there. You can't keep up with it.
So get it out of the, out of your head and then allowing, you know, having the teachers allow students that one last final review. Let the teacher review it, make some suggestions and give the student one more chance. Every single one of those things we talked about dealt with the revision and editing process. That is something that kids with writing challenges struggle with the most. So allowing them that one last chance to make any edits or revisions.
Obviously, the computer is a huge, you know, and I know a lot of schools and grades are using the computer now, but we're not always teaching keyboarding. So working on those keyboarding skills. Um, we've also found that cursive writing can be very, um, I say therapeutic.
It's just easier. It flows, right? Everything's connected.
Everything starts at the bottom. Um, it's not the start, stop, start, stop. So if, if you're in a school that teaches cursive writing, or you have a younger student, I think it's harder to teach cursive to older students, but younger students, that's always a great option and avoid chastising them. And then this is really more for the teachers, you know, making, uh, not making fun of, but giving them a hard time for their, for their work, you know, it's not helping.
Right. Or assuming they're just being lazy. Yes. You know, right.
Providing any kind of notes or outlines. It's great. If you know, if you're, if you're in a class where they have to take a lot of notes, giving them a copy, that's like in the closed format where there's so many different words that are left out. So they still have to pay attention. They still have to follow along, but they're only having to fill in a handful of words versus write every single thing down.
And then just reduce the copying aspects, having to copy math problems from the computer or from the board. Nobody's using books anymore. But that copying so many different mistakes, they can't read it. Their numbers aren't lined up right.
So give them a hard copy. And then there are some students that would benefit from being evaluated by an occupational therapist. There are therapies that can strengthen those muscles so that they are better at gripping the pencil.
They have more control over. their hand and their, and their letter formations, is that going to, you know, be the thing that they need? That's going to make the biggest change.
Maybe not, but it can help. All of these things can help. Especially what I think in the younger years, um, they can really, really were occupational therapists. Not only are they strengthening their fine motor skills, they even make sure that the child has the core strength and the appropriate body, I guess, positioning to be able to sit appropriately and hold the pencil correctly and angle the paper and be able to write properly. They can also reteach letter formation and consistency with writing, with spacing.
If you are considering asking your school for an occupational therapy evaluation, keep in mind that, you know, occupational therapy in the school settings is considered a related service. So if your child is in special education and has an IEP, or if you are having them evaluated for special education and you are requesting that occupational therapy evaluation, they are trying to determine the. the OTs, the occupational therapists, they have to determine that the child cannot make adequate progress on their individual learning goals, curriculum goals, without the service of occupational therapy. So in a roundabout way, it's hard to qualify for occupational therapy services in the school setting, but don't be afraid to request that evaluation if your child is struggling tremendously with writing.
So we're going to open up for questions. I know Jennifer's been collecting some and of course, we have a lot of great questions in chat. I want to start with the first one. the very beginning where you talked about having to be working kind of at grade level and we have two two related questions to what does that at grade level look like um one had to do with covid and uh learning loss and has that affected what working at grade level looks like well i'll let you take that one first and then and then i'll give you the other one you know, it should. And there's been lots of talk about the, you know, the tests that we use, the standardized tests were normed prior to COVID.
So the students were comparing these individual students to, you know, their learning looks a little bit different. So that is taken into consideration, you know, as to, especially for those younger kids that did K1, 2, you know, via, you know, virtually. you have to take that into consideration.
Was that adequate instruction, first of all? And, you know, if it was, there's that. But a lot of times we have to decide, was that adequate?
Did they get the instruction they need? Or are these gaps expected? And so that is very subjective right now.
I don't know that there's a standardized way to address that. But I know that there's lots of talk about it. But we're also, again, Comparing them to same age peers.
So if the whole, if the majority of their, their peers in their class are lacking those same writing skills, then it's probably very well due to, you know, the COVID pandemic and lack of appropriate instruction. If the majority of their peers are making adequate progress and mastering these prerequisite skills or these basic writing skills, handwriting skills, and your child isn't. then, you know, maybe it wasn't related to COVID pandemic. But that's something the examiner, the evaluator has got to seek out. And that's not always something that's done.
It's important to find out from the parent, talking to the teacher, you know, are you seeing these struggles across, you know, the grade level, across all the kids in your class, or do you feel like this is more specific to this individual student? That's good to know. Thank you. And then the other one was kind of on the other side.
And this is when we get emailed a lot to parents who have twice exceptional kids or kids who are almost above grade level smart, often feel they have challenges qualifying because their kids are kind of compensating enough to keep up. How do you handle that situation? And is there any advice there? So because they are compensating. You're exactly right.
It is very hard. I will say that schools also, you know, to qualify for special education services, you actually have to meet two criteria. One of them being meeting criteria for a disability condition.
Under IDEA, there's 13 different disabilities. You have to meet the criteria for one of those disabilities. The second thing is you have to demonstrate educational need. And that's the kicker.
And that's where, you know, the unfortunate thing where a lot of kiddos get overlooked. Actually, they sometimes never even get up to the evaluation process because the school will meet and say, we don't see any educational need. We see testing, testing, we see A's and B's or, you know, their written expression skills are fine. I can, again, barely read what they wrote, but so.
That is a very hard area. And again, you know, we're looking at a preponderance of evidence and going back to dysgraphia is not necessarily based on your grades that you're making in the classroom. And I think that those students, we find that when we come across those students, they're the students that tend to. fall under that 504 umbrella where you don't have to necessarily meet the IDEA requirements of a learning disability.
You could have a diagnosis from someone like us and get some accommodations if nothing else. Unfortunately, those parents, if any additional services are needed in the way of tutoring or therapies or things like that, those are usually done. you know, outside of school, but we can at least get them accommodations under 504. Right. And so speech to text, this is always, this is always a question.
So the first question around speech to text was, are you seeing issues with diagnosis or changes in things now that kids are texting and using speech to text so early and not doing as much handwriting, or is that not affecting? I think so, because in school, you're not doing voice to text in school. You're still going through all the same, you know, the same learning process for writing that we went through, you know, 30 years ago.
So I actually think it works. It's great for kids with dysgraphia or dyslexia because it does allow them to communicate with their friends and not feel embarrassed when they can't spell a word. But no, I don't feel like it's impacting the program.
Yeah, I don't. Surprisingly, even when we're asking them to write and we're evaluating their writing, we're not seeing a lot of the acronyms that they use in texting. So it's pretty cool that they're able to do that code shifting and they kind of know the difference that this is not the appropriate time to, you know. We've seen it once or twice. It just makes us giggle.
But no, it's definitely not a problem. Sounds good. And then with that speech to text, a couple of people said speech to text doesn't help their child.
Is it still dysgraphia if you can't kind of if the speech to text is not helping or what do you do then? So so that to me says then it's probably more the content, right? It's the ideas.
And that's where we want to dig in a little bit deeper. We're looking at all of those areas that we just went through. Is it a is it a.
retrieval piece? Is it a language piece as far as being able to understand the vocabulary, use the right words so that it could come out as an issue with written expression, but there could be more going on and that we can address and make recommendations based on those. So yeah, if it's just difficulty telling a story, whether it's verbally, if it's hard to tell it verbally, then it's really hard to put it on paper, obviously.
So that's why we look at those verbal skills first. Can you give it to me verbally? And if they can't, well, then we're going to look at some other areas and some other issues as well.
And you can still use a graphic organizer before you go to write your story using speech to text. You know, you can pull up a graphic organizer on the computer and put your thoughts and ideas in this organized manner. And that might help some of those kiddos that even with voice to text are struggling to get their ideas out.
Sounds great. And then I know we're at time one, last one. Dyslexia and dysgraphia obviously are different.
You mentioned it a little bit at the beginning, but there are kids who have both. And so how does this process change if the student is also dyslexic? Does that affect some of the testing or is it very clear that they're both throughout the testing?
Yes, we do a lot of it. Really. We're looking at when we, when we do an evaluation, we're looking at everything.
So we may add a test if we see those difficulties with the phonological awareness and decoding or reading fluency. But no, it does not. It doesn't impact the way the evaluation is done because we're looking at everything.
And as we see different needs pop up, we might dig a little bit deeper, but we're still going to make sure we cover all the bases. So but no, it is very common to have both. Absolutely.
Yeah, I was going to add that, even though I said that they're not. related and having guaranteed it's not yeah having one does not mean you're going to have the other they are still common comorbid conditions that occur together and there were there were a couple comments about adhd i think we anecdotally see that as an extremely common comorbid condition too you mentioned the executive function is that one you are also seeing and do you have any recommendations for parents who might think that their children have both dysgraphia and adhd You know, I think working with an executive function coach or a tutor who specializes in kids that struggle with executive functions, because it's so important to understand that brain and how an ADHD brain works, but also really it's the overwhelm. It really is. It all starts with the overwhelm.
This is too much. I don't know where to start. An ADHD brain has a very hard time breaking things into little bitty pieces.
So they just see this giant task and they melt down. And so really helping them, okay, you know what, we're just going to start with just this part. We're not going to worry about the rest of this. Let's do this.
And then we're going to take a break or we'll finish the other part tomorrow or however you can set it up. But like an executive function coach or an ADHD coach is really good at strategies for those kinds of things, especially working specifically with a child. and their specific needs for sure and this one might be a touchy one but it's probably important information because we do talk about um disparities in these communities and all that but roughly how much is a comprehensive test outside of a school district was asked so our comprehensive evaluation is 1450. And I think we're definitely on the cheaper end.
That's a lot cheaper than most of the ones I hear. I would say I'm usually here in the 3,000 to 4,000. Yeah. Although I live in a major metropolitan area, so it's probably worse here. Yes.
And we do ours in person and virtually. So we work with clients around the country. And some of the prices we hear from some of the other cities.
And states. It's crazy to me. It is crazy. Yeah.
Okay, well, thank you so much. This was so helpful. A lot of great information, a lot of great comments and questions. We appreciate everybody's time.
We got asked a number of times, yes, this is being recorded and we will be sending it out within the week. We will also post email addresses for Lori and Abby. So thank you so much for all of that.
I'm going to put a quick poll question out for everybody about. how much they enjoyed the webinar tonight. And we're going to take a break for this summer.
We will be back in late August. I believe it's going to be August 30th with Michael Greshler from the SMARTS program talking about practical strategies for executive function around writing. So we're excited for that.
But for now, this should be out in about a week for people to go back and watch and feel free to reach out. Dysgraphia Life is info at Dysgraphia Life. And do you want to share?
your emails. It's Laurie, L-A-U-R-I-E at diagnostic-learning.com or Abby, A-B-B-E-Y at diagnostic-learning.com. Great.
Thank you so much for your time tonight. And thanks everyone for your attention. Bye guys. Thank you.