BRAIN RESEARCH AND GRAPHOMOTOR PLANNING

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BRAIN RESEARCH AND GRAPHOMOTOR PLANNING

• What do we know? How does that change what we as
  educators should do as best practice?

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What is motor planning?

• Motor planning or praxis involves three main
  steps
• initiation I want to do something
• planning This is how my body has to move to do
  what I want to do
• execution These nerve impulses need to fire to
  allow these muscles to complete the actions that
  I want to complete

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What parts of the Brain do these tasks?

• The easy answer is
• most every part of the brain is actively involved
  in movement pattern execution
• More specifically
• the cerebellum
• the visual cortex
• the parietal lobe
• occipital lobe
• the frontal lobe

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What is graphomotor planning?

• Graphomotor planning is the blending of
• attention to task,
• fine motor coordination,
• memory,
• visual processing,
• language and
• higher order thinking

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How does our body get written language out on
paper?

• Destreri, Farina, Alberoni, Pomati, Nichelli,
  Mariani (2000) discuss the components of writing
  tasks in their research. They summarize the
  steps to written language production as follows
• (1) the allographic level, where selection of
  style and case occur,
• (2) the stroke sequence selection level, choosing
  the specific graphomotor pattern for each letter,
  
• (3) the graphomotor pattern level, which states
  the direction, relative size, position, and order
  of strokes to write a letter form, and
• (4) lower level motor processes where motor
  programs are translated into nerve processes to
  specific muscle groups.
• The lower level motor processes are the source of
  most students difficulty with writing written
  letter production.

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SIGNS OF DYSGRAPHIA(dysdifficulty,
graphiawriting)

• Generally illegible writing (despite
  appropriate time and attention given the task)
• Inconsistencies mixtures of print and cursive,
  upper and lower case, or irregular sizes,
  shapes, or slant of letters
• Unfinished words or letters, omitted words
• Inconsistent position on page with respect to
  lines and margins
• Inconsistent spaces between words and letters
• Cramped or unusual grip, especially
• holding the writing instrument very close to the
  paper, or
• holding thumb over two fingers and writing from
  the wrist
• Strange wrist, body, or paper position
• Talking to self while writing, or carefully
  watching the hand that is writing
• Slow or labored copying or writing - even if it
  is neat and legible
• Content which does not reflect the student's
  other language skills

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Same activity, different levels and places of
activation
These three functional magnetic resonance images
(fMRI) show brain activity patterns of three
different people performing the same simple,
finger tapping task. The level of brain activity
during performance of this task is designated
using color. Blue indicates a low to moderate
level of activity, red indicates a high level of
activity, and yellow indicates an extremely high
level of activity. As you can see, each of these
three individuals shows a unique pattern of brain
activation.
So how do we know what areas of the brain to
target when working on writing tasks with
individual children???
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Source Wing (2000) Motor control Mechanisms of
motor equivalence in handwriting. Current
Biology.
What happens when we write?
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PET scanning related to handwriting
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PET scanning related to handwriting
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PET scanning during a visual motor task
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Handwriting without Tears
Dysgraphia. Children with dysgraphia have trouble
producing written language due to poor motor
planning. They struggle with organizational
skills and movements that need to be in an
automatic and specific order, such as the
formation of letters for writing. Children with
dysgraphia can be very "scattered" in their
writing habits. You can help organize these
children in the following ways

• Teach the shapes (parts and pieces) of the
  letters using the wood pieces and the smiley mat.
  
• Use the slate and gray blocks to correct capital
  letter and number reversals. The smiley face will
  become a consistent reminder of the starting
  corner and will orient the child to the left side
  of the slate.
• Provide visual models for the child to follow
  refer the child to the pictures in the workbooks
  that give additional visual cues for letter
  formation. The picture prompts in the workbooks
  will help the dysgraphic child remember the
  letters.
• Provide many practice sessions for the child to
  develop patterns for letter formation.
• Teach the letters in the recommended groups of
  similar strokes to help develop consistent
  patterns of letter formation.

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All Kinds of Minds - Dr.
Mel Levine
www.allkindsofminds.com

• Center that works to train educators and
  researchers in methods and strategies to
  individualize to meet students with learning
  disabilities needs