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Purpose: To verify the efficacy of a perceptual and visual-motor skill intervention program for students with dyslexia., Methods: The participants were 20 students from third to fifth grade of a public elementary school in Marília, São Paulo, aged from 8 years to 11 years and 11 months, distributed into the following groups: Group I (GI; 10 students with developmental dyslexia) and Group II (GII; 10 students with good academic performance). A perceptual and visual-motor intervention program was applied, which comprised exercises for visual-motor coordination, visual discrimination, visual memory, visual-spatial relationship, shape constancy, sequential memory, visual figure-ground coordination, and visual closure. In pre- and post-testing situations, both groups were submitted to the Test of Visual-Perceptual Skills (TVPS-3), and the quality of handwriting was analyzed using the Dysgraphia Scale., Results: The analyzed statistical results showed that both groups of students had dysgraphia in pretesting situation. In visual perceptual skills, GI presented a lower performance compared to GII, as well as in the quality of writing. After undergoing the intervention program, GI increased the average of correct answers in TVPS-3 and improved the quality of handwriting., Conclusion: The developed intervention program proved appropriate for being applied to students with dyslexia, and showed positive effects because it provided improved visual perception skills and quality of writing for students with developmental dyslexia.

Purpose: To characterize, compare and classify the performance of 2nd to 5th grade students from public schools according to the semiology of spelling errors., Methods: Participants were 120 students from 2nd to 5th grades of a public school in Marília (SP), Brazil, 30 students from each grade, who were divided into four groups: GI (2nd grade), GII (3rd grade), GIII (4th grade), and GIV (5th grade). The tasks of the Pro-Ortografia test were applied: collective version (writing of alphabet letters, randomized dictation of letters, words dictation, nonwords dictation, dictation with pictures, thematic writing induced by picture) and individual version (dictation of sentences, purposeful error, spelled dictation, orthographic lexical memory)., Results: Significant difference was found in the between-group comparison indicating better performance of students in every subsequent grade in most of the individual and collective version tasks. With the increase of grade level, the groups decreased the average of writing errors., Conclusion: The profile of spelling acquisition of the Portuguese writing system found in these public school students indicates normal writing development in this population.