helping students with writing

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Hi! I am a school psychologist who helps young students with AS improve their writing. Anyone have any feelings about the use of an alphasmart, word processor, or speech recognition technology?

Ariane

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

hello arianne, welcome to wp!

about the teaching writing, do you mean grammer or do you mean the penmanship?? if its penmanship, grrrr i think i should have been givin a computer to use full time, (yes use of computer was in iep)

when i was younger i was givn OT and they had me use the stetro rubber finger grip heres a link to the site that has the stetro grips,

http://www.theraproducts.com/index.php? ... ts_id=4322 the handwriting only stayed neat for about 6 months while using the rubber grips then just got worse (even with grip)

my suspicion as to why handwriting can be sloppy, 2 reasons, is either hyperactivity(in a rush) and/or fine motor tone (very common in aspergers syndrome) schools many times interpet sloppy handwriting as being in a rush and not paying attention when it really is from a fine motor control problem,

my ideas on how this can be fixed, if its a mild case, i would suggest positioning grips or special pens/pencils and telling the child slowly, neatly and on the lines for moderate to severe cases it may be needed to use what i call linearizing, such as by use of special braces or splints or use of a manual machine to help writing process and muscle control.

if the school board allows for adaptive devices as part of the IDEA policy/regulation, and the student is creative, have then help in their own way to help improve handwriting and adaptive devices (i sure did, see the grey arm thing at the laptop in my avator? its is a commercial door closer, i used that thing since may 2001 for handwriting and its best thing for me due to few facters, no electricity or batteries needed, no need to connect (wired or wireless) to a printer, and theres practically no way a person can cheat (during a test) being it preserves use of a pencil. although some find it awkard to use an unusual device meant for closing doors as a handwriting adaptive/assistive device, it may be best if they use an alphasmart if they can offord it.

i was offered one if I had went into DVR and DDD (dept of vocational Rehabilitation of nj, and Department of Developmental Disabilities of nj) I declined because I was tired of how the school was treating me by assuming what i can or cannot do and had wrong definition of what aspergers syndrome is (thank you for making this site alex) and knew that if school is that way that i knew the state governemnet agencies for disabled would do same. bad enough same school district took me to the ARC of mercer to see how its like, i felt humiliated because ARC is a sheltered workshop and mostly for people who need help with personal and ADL (activities of daily living) skills and need prompting. ^^sorry about long rant about arc,

since after high school (graduated in 2002) only "writing" i do is just sign for packages (poor UPS man sees my sloppiness) and shopping list (thats mostly done on computer) all items saved then every week i just open the file then just backspace out what i dont need for the week and then print and close out (and do not save changes) i now have to make a new master list since i lost my old one due to having to do a complete system restore to factory presets out-of-box state.

nice to meet you again here and hope you enjoy interacting and helping out when you can,