Wednesday, January 24, 2018

How To Manage ADHD In The Classroom

By Dennis Ward


Attention, Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is commonly experienced by children from a young age. It affects almost five percent of the population and is the most childhood behavior disorder. ADHD in the classroom can interfere with the performance of the child because of lack of concentration. These kids can also find it very difficult in making and keeping friends thus the teachers have to make sure that they assist the kids to concentrate in class.

The symptoms are either inattentive behaviors or hyperactive-impulsive behaviors. Children can have either of those, and some of them suffer from a combination of both. Some of the inattentive behaviors include making careless school work mistakes and overlooking details, easily distracted, difficulty in following instructions, problems with the organization of tasks, failure to finish school work among others.

On the other hand, symptoms associated with impulsive or hyperactive behavior are fidgeting, squirming and, problems with staying at one place for a long time. Talking excessively, impatience, climbing or running in inappropriate places. Unable to play quietly, intruding and interrupting discussions, conversations and games, blurting of answers before the end of a question and being super active all the time.

These children often perform very poorly because they do not pay attention in class. Also, due to the impulsive behavior, they can leave tasks or assignments and even exams unfinished. They also face so many disciplinary issues especially if the teacher is unaware that the kids have a diagnosis of the inattentive behavior. Therefore, the kids will often be punished due to noise making or disrupting the class or interfering with other children when they are learning.

For these children to be helped in class, the teacher must be aware of their condition and be willing to assist them. For instance, the teacher can make sure that the tasks given to these children are short and brief and require immediate feedback. If the projects are long, they should be broken down into parts that can easily be manageable at specific times.

Also, the children should be given direct instruction by the teachers. Because of their short attention span, the teachers should attend to the kids face to face as opposed to the other children. This will help the child to concentrate more and finish the tasks or assignments before they start squirming or talking too much. More so, their performance may also improve with time.

Another thing that the teachers should do is to make sure that the lessons are well structured and organized. This will help the kids to identify the important points quickly before being distracted. The students with this condition tend to have better memory if the material is structured in a meaningful way for them. Hence, the teacher should provide a lecture outline before giving the notes to students.

The rules given to these children should be defined well, be specific and reinforced frequently through visible cues so that they do not forget. This will make the student have visual memory hence he/she can remember. There are so many other teaching methods that can be used by a teacher to help the students with ADHD to be attentive so that they can perform better in class.




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