7 year old girl with handwriting challenges

This girl initially came to OT with delayed fine motor skills and poor stamina in fine motor tasks (i.e. cutting, writing). She often reversed letters and numbers when writing and had poor phonemic awareness. As she got older, she was struggling more and more to keep up with the writing expectations in class.

6 year old girl came from a very loving and supportive family who were very proactive with implementing therapy strategies at home. She was later diagnosed with dyslexia.

During the assessment, it was identified that the girl had not established the motor plan for her letters, making forming the letters very challenging for her. This meant that forming the letters was taking up too much space in her brain, impacting her ability to focus on other things in her writing (i.e. spelling, content of her writing).

Fortnightly OT that focused on re-teaching of the correct letter formations in a way that made sense for the girl and helped her to retain this information. This was combined with fine motor activities to help her develop her fine motor skills and hand strength to improve her stamina.

After 11 months, the girl was able to produce clear, legible letters. Her writing was functional when completing smaller amounts of written work, but she continued to write slower than her peers, so she used speech-to-text options in class when available. She was discharged from OT but continued on with speech therapy to support her ongoing spelling skills.