How to Teach Kids With ADD

Teaching children with ADD can be an amazing adventure for everyone in the classroom. And the fact is, in today's interactive world of technology, all kids want more entertainment and less rote learning in class. How can a teacher reach all the kids in their classroom? Try these techniques and watch your class sit up and take notice of your great teaching style!

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Classroom Hints and Ideas

1. Interactive is the rule! Show as much AV as you can in your class, but don't just leave it at that! Once kids see the results of something, they still need to know how to perform the steps for getting it done. If you show them something really cool first, and then show them how to do it, you'll get better attention and participation in class.
2. Before you begin a lesson, ask the class what they already know about the subject. Once you've taken this inventory, you'll understand better the things you need to focus on for learning.
3. Make an assessment of each child in your class to find out what they love to do. Find ways to show each child who is having difficulty in a subject, the relationship between what they love and the trouble area. They'll make better connections and remember things longer.
4. Kids have to learn how to put things together, but they don't need instructions on how to tear things apart. Try a little challenge--show them something that they know today, and then assign each student a project to present something either historic or technical in nature that relates to it. A good example would be to ask for a report on an invention that led to the subject as it is today, what people were doing with their lives at that time, what other subjects the inventor had to know about to create the invention, and what some of the contrary thoughts or ideas were. If you're teaching math, ask for something made possible by the arithmetic they're learning now. For language/grammar, ask for examples of the syntax or sentence construction you're teaching. Make it even more fun--have them cite examples of the words and grammar from their favorite video game.
5. For younger students, check out the Montessori method of education. Montessori shows students concepts and immerses them in the tactile, sensory and cognitive elements to learning.
6. Structure the day around a cognitive energy cycle. That means the mornings should be about exposing the children to new information or work that demands focus. After lunch, the work should require less concentration and more free-form thinking, or studying the new information. By the midafternoon, activities should center around doing something with the new information received, solving problems or applying the new info to physical things. Evening should be about creating something new with the things learned through the day.