Dysgraphia, educational interventions and didactic implications: from prevention to intervention

Dysgraphia is a widespread disorder among school children. The prevalence for developmental writing disorders is about 7–15% among school-aged children (Döhla, & Heim, 2016; Katusic, Colligan, Weaver, & Barbaresi, 2009). It has become clear now that learning to write has an unquestionable educational value. According to Konnikova (2014), it is not only what children write that matters, but how they write. That’s why we need to examine and understand which education and didactic methods can be useful to teach handwriting to those children that find it difficult or that, despite all the efforts, have an unreadable handwriting. It is also necessary to investigate the best way to intervene, especially since writing difficulties are often related to other learning disabilities. This paper contains the conclusions of a lengthy period of observations and data collecting on those children identified by the authors, who suffer from writing difficulties. This work was aimed at identifying an educational working methodology to prevent writing difficulties or recover from them. We will describe here early manifestations of dysgraphic disorder and show efficient educational and didactic intervention tools within the school context.