Dyspraxia Clumsy child syndrome

1
Dyspraxia - (Clumsy child syndrome)

• Affects
• Gross motor skills (co-ordination)
• Fine motor skills (writing/drawing)
• Speech and language
• Organisation (items and ideas)

2
What is Dyspraxia?

• Dyspraxic children will not appear different.
  Being of outwardly normal appearance can be an
  advantage, but it can also have a downside if the
  problems are not understood,
• one whose ability to perform skilled movement is
  impaired despite normal intelligence and normal
  findings on conventional neurological
  examination (Gubbay 1975)
• 5 of the school population in UK
• 8-15 of the school population in USA
• In UK male female ratio is 41

3
Integration into mainstream

• Government paper MEETING SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL
  NEEDS
• Spectrum of dyspraxia
• Supporting external agencies
• Classroom support
• Peer support

4
Gross Motor Control

• Awkward posture, gait and sitting positions
• Poor Pelvic girdle stability
• Slow at dressing/undressing - looks untidy
• Poor at PE and games
• Cannot ride a bicycle/late learning
• Knocks into furniture/people
• May be overly sensitive to touch
• Fidgets - cannot keep still

5
Fine motor control

• Slow handwriting speed
• Poor legibility, not understood by others or self
• Untidy work
• Tries hard, creates physical tension and fatigue
• Focus on handwriting interferes with thinking
• Affects spelling

6
Communication Difficulties

• Sound errors are consistent
• Difficulty with fast sentences and polysyllabic
  words
• Problems monitoring own speech
• Word finding difficulties
• Causes offence unwittingly
• Reading/Spelling problems due to-
• difficulty sounding out words
• incorrect punctuation
• also having a language disorder

7
Poor organisation

• Poor short term memory
• Poor auditory memory
• Problems remembering explanations
• Difficulty following instructions
• Poor ability to judge time (and distance)

8
Strategies for the mainstream school

• Understand and be sensitive to the students
  difficulties
• Provide ancillary support
• Focus on effort and small achievements
• Raise self esteem and confidence
• Remember adolescent growth exacerbates the problem

9
Strategies for the classroom

• Use note takers or if not possible dont expect
  them to copy large chunks from the the board or
  books. Coordinating eyes brain and hands are not
  easy for most of us and for a dyspraxic child it
  can be impossible
• Provide a written outline of lessons, copies of
  notes and OHPs
• Teach handwriting and keyboard skills
• Voice recognition software
• Put information in accessible bites
• Use colour, post its etc to mark important
  sections of work
• Give more time to complete tasks, break down long
  tasks into short sections
• Provide frequent changes of activity
• Be consistent in routines

10
Strategies for the classroom

• Break down all tasks into smaller manageable
  slices.
• Allow the child to finish a task before moving
  on.
• In PE/Games allow the child to choose not to take
  part in team games and to choose activities to
  build up abilities
• Ensure they are aided to find their way around,
  they will forget where they should be. If the
  current teacher checks where they should go next,
  it would help.
• Dont set them up to fail, do be aware of what
  you are asking them to achieve.
• Ask them to repeat back any series of
  instructions given, it helps to internalise it.