Psychopedagogical peculiarities of writing

Psychopedagogical and sensory - motor investigation of SEN children’s writing process permits to make some didactic conclusions: 1. Because of impaired sensory-motor development pupils with special educational needs and especially the intellectually disabled experience a great deal of problems learning to write in comparison with their peers whose development was normal hence the educational process maintaining the same direction of all pupils’ activity and meeting all the requirements of didactics, in addition acquires the features of corrective - educational work having a double purpose: 1) an essential part of the teacher’s efforts should be focused on managing and diminishing the developmental disorders of a child (strengthening hand muscles, improving motion coordination, accuracy, developing visual orientation etc.) 2) a child having developmental problems is provided with an individual and differentiated aid: placing a SEN child near his normal peer the teacher cannot require the same pace of work or thinking, the same attention, keen observation etc. and he cannot make the same requirements for the quality of performance. During a lesson one can experience many such or similar aspects of communication that’s why a teacher working on a special programme with junior pupils (especially in 1-2 forms) devotes the main attention not to the application of the content (this is important in senior forms) but to the improvement of the educational process which includes creation of an individual and specific teaching style for every child. 2. Disregard of elementary hygienic requirements impacts the quality of writing and child’s health therefore creation of teaching environment is the basic consideration of the quality of SEN children’s education and one of the main conditions that shouldn’t be ignored by any educational institution. 3. Neither the spelling skills’ quality of the SEN children who had been observed nor the attitude of teachers to the problems of learning to write can be any grounds to declare modem Lithuanian spelling (in the form of written letters) very complex and too difficult for a 6-7 years old child. Not declining the idea (Banaitis, 1999) of modification and simplification of the form of written letters (it had already been done) the time for such reform is too early