A Guide to Teaching and Support for Students with ADHD

A guide to teaching and support for students with ADHD:

Higher Education Environment

Recommended strategies for lecturers and support staff in lectures & seminars

·  All students with ADHD benefit from a structured teaching approach: organise lectures into introduction, explanation with tasks, and final summary. Always recap on important key learning points.

·  Think about seating in classroom/lecture theatre. Find a suitable place for the student to avoid distractions and aid attention – e.g. sitting at the front.

·  Use frequent eye contact to gain student’s attention.

·  Provide copies of PowerPoint slides or other handouts prior to the session electronically or in a hard copy. This provision will enable students to focus and take meaningful notes in the lecture.

·  Allow students to record lectures using a Dictaphone to supplement written notes, to support memory and attention difficulties.

·  For students with acute concentration difficulties, allow them to have mini ‘timeout’ sessions in lengthy lectures, while the lecturer continues teaching, to refocus their minds and regain their concentration.

·  In seminars, tutors should occasionally spend a few extra minutes explaining concepts on a one-to-one basis. Students with ADHD sometimes benefit from further clarification or an alternative explanation of a concept due to concentration difficulties.

·  Students with ADHD often need sensitive encouragement and support when completing tasks as they genuinely struggle more than other students in keeping focused.

·  Students with ADHD are often enthusiastic, creative and inventive learners. Try to utilise these positive qualities for assessed group projects. Tutors may need to provide guidance on managing roles and tasks to keep your student’s contributions focused.

Recommended strategies for specialist one-to-one tuition,

including personal tutorials with course tutors

·  Develop student’s metacognitive awareness regarding his attention deficit disorder. Teach and promote independent learning so your student provides his own strategies and solutions to meet his learning needs.

·  Create a clear Learning Plan which explicitly targets your student’s learning needs, reviewed on a regular basis.

·  Appeal to your student’s emotional intelligence when identifying effective time-management and organisational strategies.

·  Help your student create a routine, e.g. create a ‘personal study timetable’ which helps structure and organize the whole day. ‘Get yourself ready for university at the same time, in the same way, every day.’[1]

·  Set up Google Calendar, which can send text-message reminders to the student’s mobile phone. This will help your student to remember and organise key appointments, and study tasks identified in tutorials.

·  Support your student in managing and completing assignment deadlines by creating a ‘personal academic deadline planner’.

·  During specialist support tutorials, create ‘to do lists’ or daily reminder schedules, focusing on tangible, short-term steps.

·  Remember: meeting targets and sticking to plans are ongoing challenges for students with ADHD. These are aspects of their learning difficulty.

·  Persevere with clear tasks and targets as students with ADHD really benefit from a structured approach.

·  Support your student to develop her organisational skills: e.g. colour-coded ring-binders / notebooks for each subject area, with matching electronic folders.

·  Identify with your student times and places where he is more focused.

·  When setting work/tasks, encourage your student to work in a quiet area, doing one thing at a time, allowing time for short breaks to aid concentration.

·  In specialist tutorials, actively use TextHELP Read and Write Gold, to enhance reading performance, comprehension and concentration. The software’s multi-sensory approach enables a student with ADHD to focus and absorb the information they are reading.

·  Inspiration software helps students to create concise and manageable visual plans. This software enables a student with ADHD to work on smaller, more manageable chunks and also quickly regain their train of thought when they return to a piece of work after taking a break.

Additional specialist support provision

·  Students with ADHD often benefit from a mentor to give them some one-to-one pastoral support.

·  A mentor encourages a student to discuss any challenges and difficulties they are experiencing on their course. Mentoring sessions also provide a student with the space and time to explore some solutions in overcoming difficulties with behaviour and concentration.

·  Remember that by promoting metacognitive awareness, appealing to emotional intelligence and teaching practical study strategies – performance will improve!

1

Robert Burwell, 2009

[1] Weinstein C. (1994) 'Cognitive remediation strategies' Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research 3(1): 44-57.