How to Teach Writing to Students With a Learning Disability

A student with a learning disability struggles when expressing oneself verbally, organizing thoughts, learning to read and therefore struggles to learn to write. Writing is a vehicle to express thoughts and relay information and for a student with a learning disability, the inability to express information can lead to lack of self-esteem. Usually, a student with a learning disability is intelligent and has an average or above average intellect but may have difficulty processing information. With the proper support and teaching method, a student with a learning disability can learn to write.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Expand expressive language skills. A student with a learning disability usually has difficulty with expressive language and this can lead to difficulty with writing. Activities that can help with expressive language include expanding a sentence, story telling and introducing the types of sentences. Without expressive language, it will be difficult to put thoughts and ideas into writing.

2. Develop organizational and planning skills. A student with a learning disability must learn to plan what they want to write, to whom, why they are writing, what they know and how they will organize their thoughts. A thinking sheet can help the student with answering these questions as they prepare to write.

3. Create a rough draft from information on the thinking sheet. The rough draft will help with developing a plan of action for the student and teacher or parent to discuss the content and structure of the draft and make necessary changes.

4. Revise and edit the rough draft. This is a very important part of the writing process and will help the student deliver what is on the thinking sheet.

5. Teach text structure for writing. This will also provide a plan of action for writing. Each type of writing has steps and will dictate how text should be structured. For example, an essay contains a thesis and supporting statements while a narrative contains character development and a story highpoint.

6. Provide feedback. Provide the student with a learning disability with frequent feedback on their writing. This will help student with determining the quality of their writing, identify any missing elements and pinpoint strengths.

7. Practice to reinforce skills learned. This will continue to develop writing skills.

Tips & Warnings

• Have patience.
• Provide instruction in a workshop method or resource room.
• Some students with a learning disability may have issues with fine motor skills such as handwriting. This makes it difficult to translate thoughts to paper and discourage student from wanting to write. Practice letter formations and copying words to develop handwriting skills.

Resources

• Tips for teaching writing to students with learning disabilities
• Oral activites