Dysgraphia affects a child’s ability to form words and letters, space words properly, and express thoughts in writing. These apps can help.

Many students with dysgraphia struggle with spelling, handwriting, and expressing their thoughts on paper when writing. ‎While an individualized, multi-sensory instructional plan is most ideal for remedying these academic challenges, there are many tech tools that can help kids with dysgraphia build these key skills. Try some of the apps detailed below.

iTrace
‎Handwriting, letter spacing, and fine motor skills are all areas that are typically challenging for kids with dygraphia. iTrace is a great tool for helping students build these important skills. With this app, children as young as age 3 can practice letter, number, and word formation, and can even work on spelling their name properly. An animated “hand” demonstrates tracing each letter before the child writes it, serving as a helpful model for proper formation. Parents can even add their own words, select background music, and receive progress reports on the status of their child’s writing. iTrace is a useful tool for helping your child master these key writing skills.

ABC Pocket Phonics
This is another great app for teaching students in grades pre-K-1 proper letter formation when writing, along with letter/sound recognition and how to blend sounds together when spelling. Kids are introduced to various phonemes, starting with basic consonants and short vowels and gradually increasing to more complex sounds, and are asked to say each phoneme, write it, and apply it to a word. At the end of each unit, they are awarded with stars based on selecting the correct phonemes to complete certain words and accurately tracing letters. This app is Orton Gillingham–based and much more fun for most kids than traditional pen-and-paper phonics activities.

Montessori Crosswords
Montessori Crosswords is another great app for building spelling skills. Preschool and elementary-aged students learn to spell words by dragging letters into a crossword frame that is associated with selected pictures. Students start with basic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and drag letters to spell simple words like can‎, dog, and mat, and later progress to words containing blends (like flag, plug, and glad), words with consonant and vowel digraphs (like ship, bath, and feet), and multi-syllabic words. When they correctly spell a word, colorful confetti fills the screen, providing children with a fun and engaging experience.

Dragon Dictation
Many kids with dysgraphia have intelligent and creative ideas but struggle to express them on paper when writing. Dragon Dictation is a voice recognition app that allows students to dictate their ideas orally and have them presented on a screen, rather than transcribing them. ‎ To use the app, students hit “record” and begin speaking, then hit “stop” when they are done. They can then cut and paste their text and save it elsewhere, or send it out via email, text, or social media. It’s important that kids speak clearly when using this app, and it’s helpful for an adult to check the text for accuracy after it has been dictated.

Inspiration Maps
Inspiration Maps helps students with dysgraphia organize their ideas into visual maps. Children can create organized mind maps using a touch screen as a means of brainstorming before writing a paragraph, essay, or speech. They can add colors, icons, pictures, and photos to their mind maps, making the process fun and engaging. Once completed, they can convert their map to a linear outline, or can print it, share it via email, or save it to DropBox, iTunes, or the app itself. Templates are available, or students can create their own maps.

Students with dysgraphia typically face continued spelling and writing challenges as they progress through school. These apps can help ease these struggles and set them up for academic success.

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5 Best Spelling Apps for Kids appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Kids will love these fun educational apps that will keep them learning even during the summer months. Dr. Levy’s 5 picks include apps for kids ages 4-16 that help build reading and math skills.

During the sunny months away from school, reading, writing, and math frequently take a back seat to summer fun. Students can lose important skills they gained during the school year without continuous instruction over the summer. In fact, research tells us that students score lower on standardized tests at the end of the summer than at the start of the season.

Help your child avoid losing critical academic skills over the summer with these five apps:

Starfall Learn to Read
Ages 4+
$2.99
Download for Apple or Android

With this multi-sensory app, students can listen, read, and touch letters and words to practice basic reading and spelling skills. The app includes 15 short books for kids to read, each emphasizing a different sound pattern, along with animated videos, songs, and funny characters. At the end of each book, students can play reading-related activities, including matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises. The app is fun, engaging, and interactive.

Sentence Builder
Ages 6+
$5.99
Download for iPad

Students have fun developing their grammar and sentence-writing abilities with this app. To play, they create sentences describing various pictures using slot machine-style wheels for selecting words. The game format is simple, starting with basic sentences and moving into more complex ones. The images and animations are colorful, and students build critical written expression and sentence-structure skills.

Hungry Fish
Ages 4-8
$1.99-$3.99
Download for Apple or Android

This app is an engaging tool for reinforcing basic addition and subtraction as well as mental math. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles and feed them to a floating fish. The fish expands when it receives “food” (correct answer combinations) and shrinks when it does not receive food. As players complete and “win” each level they move on to more advanced ones, while receiving immediate feedback along the way. It’s a valuable learning tool disguised as an arcade game!

Montessori Crosswords
Ages 3-10
$2.99
Download for Apple or Android

This app is a great one for helping students develop basic phonics skills. For each exercise, the player is given a picture and is asked to drag letters from the bottom of the screen to spell the item depicted. The app starts with basic three-letter (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and moves into more complex words with blends, digraphs, and multi-syllabic words. Children can create single words and, later, multiple words using a crossword-style format. The exercises are helpful for both reading and spelling.

Learning Fundamentals: Reading Comprehension at the Paragraph Level
Ages 9-16
$3.99
Download for Apple

This app builds a myriad of skills, including attention, memory, and reading comprehension. It’s also useful for developing processing and higher-order thinking skills. Students can choose from 37 stories about various topics, including adventures, nature, and history, among others. After reading each passage, they answer main idea, important details, and inference questions in multiple-choice format, along with an opened-ended question that can be used for discussion.

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