Teaching students with ADHD can be difficult. Especially if you’ve never done it before but it’s all about how you embrace it. As a parent of a child with ADHD, I know how difficult it is. As a teacher, I understand that, too. In my 12 years of teaching I taught students with ADHD on a regular basis, several a year, and all with different degrees of the disorder. Here are a couple of classroom strategies for ADHD students.
Think Time
Think time is time a student needs to think about their response to a question. Students who have ADHD need to have time to think time so they can figure out how they want to answer your question. Think time is also important for dyslexic students For students who have ADHD, their thoughts can come out jumbled and in the wrong order. Think time allows them to arrange their thoughts so that when they say them out loud they make sense to other people. Side note: to other people who have ADHD the jumbled stuff makes perfect sense, too.
Frequent Breaks
Students who have ADHD need frequent breaks. Their brains are moving really fast all the time and that’s exhausting. Taking frequent breaks helps their brains experience less fatigue. Teachers can do this by taking brain breaks that last two to three minutes with the whole class or just allowing your ADHD student to disconnect for just a few minutes. Pro tip: always use a timer when giving a break to a student who has ADHD because ADHD’ers have a low sense of time. 5 minutes will quickly turn into 20.
Kinesthetic and Tactile Activities
Activities that allow ADHD students to move around are best. Since ADHD’ers tend to be energetic, an activity that allows them to move arounds or manipulate objects keeps them engaged. As you write your lesson plans think of ways you can add some movement into your lesson. It could be as simple as asking students standing up and sitting down several times during the lesson.
Transition Times
People with ADHD have a really hard time going from one activity to the next. Pull out that timer again. My philosophy is when working with ADHD students and even my neurotypical students are that Timers tell us when to stop, not how much time we have. Teachers can set a timer to let students know when we will move to the next activity. When. The timer goes off, say finish your thoughts or finish up your picture, I would give one more minute, then do a fun transition activity that lasts less than 5 minutes.
Let Them Fidget
As a teacher, I know distracting fidgeting is like that kid that is constantly tapping their pencil on their desk or rocking back and forth in their chair, these actions are types of fidgets.
An ADHD person’s brain needs constant stimulation. When their brain is not receiving stimulation, they need to find ways to stimulate it. Fidgeting is one of those ways and it is actually part of the concentration process. The purpose of the fidget is to fill the stimuli that are missing so that they can focus. Someone who is ADHD notices everything, way more than a neurotypical person. Like what’s going on outside the window, or what’s that weird noise coming from the air conditioner, or who the principal talking to in the hallway. An ADHD student notices all of those things and their brains are constantly thinking about them. I know fidgeting doesn’t look like concentration, but it is.
Teachers embrace your ADHD students. Students with ADHD live in a world that is typically not set up for the way they learn. Give them think time, frequent breaks, create lesson plans that allow for kinesthetic and tactile movement, remember transition time is important and fidgeting helps concentration. Using these classroom strategies for ADHD students will help them thrive and the best part is you will keep your sanity.
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