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Individualizing ADHD Education Practices.
In addition to the general strategies listed for introducing,
conducting, and concluding lessons, effective ADHD education also
includes individualizing instructional practices in accordance
with different academic subjects and the needs of their students
within each area.
Children with ADHD have different ways of learning and retaining
information, not all of which involve traditional reading and
listening. Effective ADHD education first involves identifying
areas in which each child requires extra assistance and then use
special ADHD education strategies to provide structured
opportunities for the child to review and master an academic
lesson that was previously presented to the entire class.
This guide on individualized ADHD education
practices, provided by the U.S. Department of Education, provides an
overall educational strategy
for successful instruction, academic instruction tips on
introducing lessons,
conducting lessons, providing
individualized
instructional
practices for math and
language arts,
organizational and
study skills, effective
behavioral techniques and techniques designed to
encourage
positive behavior,
along with
classroom
accommodation tips. To order a hard copy of this ADD teaching
report, e-mail edpubs@inet.ed.gov or call (877) 433-7827.
ADHD education strategies that may help facilitate this goal
include the following (grouped by subject area):
Language Arts and Reading Comprehension: To improve the
ADHD education experience to help poor readers improve their
reading comprehension skills, try the following instructional
practices;
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Silent reading time: Establish a fixed time each day for silent
reading (e.g., D.E.A.R.: Drop Everything and Read and Sustained
Silent Reading.
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Follow-along reading: Ask the child to read a story silently
while listening to other students or the teacher read the story
aloud to the entire class.
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Partner reading activities: Pair the child with ADHD with
another student partner who is a strong reader. The partners take
turns reading orally and listening to each other.
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Storyboards: Ask the child to make storyboards that illustrate
the sequence of main events in a story.
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Storytelling: Schedule storytelling sessions where the child can
retell a story that he or she has read recently.
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Playacting: Schedule playacting sessions where the child can
role-play different characters in a favorite story.
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Word bank: Keep a word bank or dictionary of new or
“hard-to-read” sight-vocabulary words.
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Board games for reading comprehension: Play board games that
provide practice with target reading-comprehension skills or
sight-vocabulary words.
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Computer games for reading comprehension: Schedule computer time
for the child to have drill-and-practice with sight vocabulary
words.
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Recorded books: These materials, available from many libraries,
can stimulate interest in traditional reading and can be used to
reinforce and complement reading lessons.
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“Backup” materials for home use: Make available to students a
second set of books and materials that they can use at home.
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Summary materials: Allow and encourage students to use published
book summaries, synopses, and digests of major reading assignments
to review (not replace) reading assignments.
Phonics: To improve the ADHD education in mastering rules
of phonics, the following are effective;
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Mnemonics for phonics. Teach the child mnemonics that provide
reminders about hard-to-learn phonics rules (e.g., “when two
vowels go walking, the first does the talking”).
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Word families: Teach the child to recognize and read word
families that illustrate particular phonetic concepts (e.g., “ph”
sounds, “at-bat-cat”).
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Board games for phonics: Have students play board games, such as
bingo, that allow them to practice phonetically irregular words.
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Computer games for phonics: Use a computer to provide
opportunities for students to drill and practice with phonics or
grammar lessons.
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Picture-letter charts: Use these for children who know sounds
but do not know the letters that go with them.
Writing: In composing stories or other writing assignments,
children with ADHD benefit from the following ADHD education
practices;
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Standards for writing assignments: Identify and teach the child
classroom standards for acceptable written work, such as format
and style.
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Recognizing parts of a story: Teach the student how to describe
the major parts of a story (e.g., plot, main characters, setting,
conflict, and resolution). Use a storyboard with parts listed for
this purpose.
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Post office: Establish a post office in the classroom, and
provide students with opportunities to write, mail, and receive
letters to and from their classmates and teacher.
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Visualize compositions: Ask the child to close his or her eyes
and visualize a paragraph that the teacher reads aloud. Another
variation of this technique is to ask a student to describe a
recent event while the other students close their eyes and
visualize what is being said as a written paragraph.
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Proofread compositions. Require that the child proofread his or
her work before turning in written assignments. Provide the child
with a list of items to check when proofreading his or her own
work.
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Tape recorders: Ask the student to dictate writing assignments
into a tape recorder, as an alternative to writing them to help
the ADHD child’s education.
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Dictate writing assignments: Have the teacher or another student
write down a story told by a child with ADHD.
Spelling: To help children with ADHD who are poor spellers,
the following techniques have been found to be helpful for ADHD
education;
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Everyday examples of hard-to-spell words: Take advantage of
everyday events to teach difficult spelling words in context. For
example, ask a child eating a cheese sandwich to spell “sandwich.”
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Frequently used words: Assign spelling words that the child
routinely uses in his or her speech each day.
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Dictionary of misspelled words: Ask the child to keep a personal
dictionary of frequently misspelled words.
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Partner spelling activities: Pair the child with another
student. Ask the partners to quiz each other on the spelling of
new words. Encourage both students to guess the correct spelling.
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Manipulatives: Use cutout letters or other manipulatives to
spell out hard-to-learn words.
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Color-coded letters: Color code different letters in
hard-to-spell words (e.g., “receipt”).
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Movement activities: Combine movement activities with spelling
lessons (e.g., jump rope while spelling words out loud).
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Word banks: Use 3" x 5" index cards of frequently misspelled
words sorted alphabetically.
Handwriting: Students with ADHD who have difficulty with
manuscript or cursive writing may well benefit from their
teacher’s use of the following ADHD education practices;
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Individual chalkboards: Ask the child to practice copying and
erasing the target words on a small, individual chalkboard. Two
children can be paired to practice their target words together.
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Quiet places for handwriting: Provide the child with a special
“quiet place” (e.g., a table outside the classroom) to complete
his or her handwriting assignments.
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Spacing words on a page: Teach the child to use his or her
finger to measure how much space to leave between each word in a
written assignment.
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Special writing paper: Ask the child to use special paper with
vertical lines to learn to space letters and words on a page.
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Structured programs for handwriting: Teach handwriting skills
through a structured program, such as Jan Olsen’s “Handwriting
Without Tears” program.
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