Ann's Adventure in Crystal City

I was incredibly fortunate this past week to attend the CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder) national conference in Crystal City. My favorite breakout session was titled “Classroom Interventions for AD/HD” and was presented by Sydney Zentall, Ph.D. I specifically enjoyed this session because many of the methods that help narrow and sustain attention in students with difficulties are relevant for all students. Below you will find just a few of the tips that I feel will be very useful to parents, teachers, and tutors.

• Kids with AD/HD need more stimulation in the classroom. Research shows that if we provide more stimulation, they’re less active.
  1. Lectures should include thought producing questions.
  
  2. Use signs, bells, clapping, and any kind of noise or visual cue that will get attention.
  
  3. Don’t repeat--instead ask student to repeat directions, assignment, etc. to you. Every time you repeat something it gets less stimulating and the person is less likely to follow through.
  
  4. Before you give verbal information, preface an important point by saying “Listen to three main points for two minutes”.
  
  5. Consider giving a white board and marker to each child. Ask a question, have students write the answer, and hold up white board. Comments from the teacher like“The majority of you have it right” don’t single out struggling students.
  
  6. Use choral responding to activate attention instead of always asking questions to individual students.
  
  7. Bright colors get attention. Teachers should write assignments on the board at the beginning of the class in red chalk and tutors can list objectives or goals in red for the student at the beginning of a session.
  
  


• Use colors to help study for spelling:
  knife
  dense
  sugar
  
  


• Provide stimulation later in a task. Don’t start a lesson with a game or hands-on activity. Putting stimulation later in a task has been proven to increase attention and provides students with a built in reward. Tutors should end a session with a game or engaging activity.
  
  


• If handwriting is poor, encourage printing and shorthand as it is faster. Encourage typing.
  
  


• Music actually helps many kids to be productive learners. However, the music must be familiar. A student should not listen to a song that he or she has never heard before as that stimulates outside focus.
  
  


• Have your students stand up and move around. Allow standing when reading.
  
  


• Giving students choice improves attention four-fold. Simply allowing a student to choose 8 out of 10 math problems to do will make a huge difference.
  
  


• Perhaps the most interesting finding I learned about was the use of MIRRORS to improve on-task behavior. Yes, that’s right, kids that had a mirror directly in front of them throughout the homework process completed three times as much homework three times more accurately! Mirrors allow the student to self-monitor.
  
  


• AD/HD students almost always have working memory problems. Working memory is the ability to hold short-term information in your mind and manipulate it. Examples of working memory include playing chess, following multi-step directions, mental math, and written language.
  
  


• Students that were allowed to use calculators, especially during multi-step problems increased sustained attention by 50%.

If you would like further explanation on any of these tips, please feel free to email me at Ann@ectutoring.com.