Making Differentiation Magic in the Classroom with Minecraft

My first year teaching physical science I (LB) had a young man whom we shall call John in class. He had been sitting silently, doing nothing most of the first quarter of school. I had seen little in the way of written work from him. John’s daily grades were continually zero after zero and his assessment grades were equally abysmal. Calls to mom and dad had been fruitless, with them explaining that he struggled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and had a hard time writing because of that. I puzzled over what to do with this student. I asked his parents if I could get him to come in early one Thursday. When he arrived I asked him to copy a text for me, read it to me aloud, and discuss it with me one to one. He sat there with a blank stare. I asked him what was wrong and all he responded with was “I can’t write!” I told him he could write and to try it, to rest assured that it wasn’t being graded. He began and within a few moments I knew. He could not write because he had dysgraphia. His attempt at writing was chaotic. Words were scattered about the page haphazardly, their placement had no logical sequence, and made no sense in light of the content he had read. According to the Learning Disabilities Association of America, “A person with this specific learning disability may have problems including illegible handwriting, inconsistent spacing, poor spatial planning on paper, poor spelling, and difficulty composing writing as well as thinking and writing at the same time.”