Managing ADHD In The Classroom

By Dennis Ward


It is a bit difficult to note that a child or student is suffering from a disorder that is caused by hyperactivity and impulsiveness. It is thus challenging to manage ADHD in the classroom especially if you are not aware that the kid has the disorder. This disorder is common in children and affects approximately 5 percent of populations. These kids tend to be poor performers because they lack concentration and they have difficulties in making friends.

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.

The hyperactive or impulsive symptoms include trouble staying in their seats, fidgeting or often squirming, running or climbing inappropriate places. Other signs include one cannot play quietly, excessive talking, very impatient, shouting out answers even before the question is complete, interrupting or intruding the conversations or games of other people and always being on the go among others.

This disorder thus adversely affects the performance of these students in school because they are very inattentive. More so, these students can be so impulsive to the extent of leaving exams as well as tasks unfinished which explains their low performances. Also, teachers that do not know that these kids are suffering may often punish them because they fail to finish tasks or to disrupt the class.

To assist these children, it is important to let the teachers know that your kid or kids are suffering from this kind of disorder. Therefore, these teachers can make sure that they give very brief or short tasks to the students and ask for immediate feedback. More so, the teachers can break apart long projects so that they become manageable by the children.

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.

On top of that, teachers must ensure that they organize and structure their lessons well before they go to the classrooms. This is because having a good outline can help the students to understand quickly. More so, these students usually have the good memory of materials that have been meaningfully structured. Therefore, it is upon teachers and tutors to ensure that they organize their lessons well.

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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