Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (#ADHD) can be a tricky disorder for both pupil and teacher to manage. For the pupil, school can be a difficult place with lots of challenges daily. They are expected to sit for long periods of time and concentrate on a specific task, and often then expected to use this knowledge to produce work of their own to demonstrate their understanding. For someone struggling to concentrate on anything for a prolonged period, attempting to do this can be hard. When you add in the difficulty that also comes with ADHD and friendships, school can be a minefield to navigate.
On the other hand, as the teacher of the class, you are expected to have all pupils engaged with your lesson and consistently produce good work to go towards progress reviews and assessments. When there are 29 other children to think about (assuming there is only 1 pupil with ADHD (there is probably more)) this can be extremely challenging for you, trying to juggle many learning abilities simultaneously.
But teachers, do not fear! There are tried and tested tools available to help you manage pupils with ADHD in the classroom. Below, I have listed 6 fab strategies that can be implemented with children formally diagnosed or for those still waiting for a diagnosis. I hope some of these will be of value for you. Please drop me a message to let me know if you have already used one of these, or if you try one let me know how it goes! Feedback is always valuable.
1. Visual Timetables
Best practice for all children, a visual timetable allows you to display what is going to happen throughout the day in an easy-to-understand way through a sequence of images or symbols. It can be a fantastic tool for just about any child, ADHD or no ADHD. It can be personalised to what your child needs, whether it is certain times of the day such as lunch that they struggle with, or can be used throughout the day to help them know what is coming next. These are great because for the child, it takes away the anxiety and uncertainty about what is happening. They could even personalise it themselves with their favourite characters to make it more engaging for them.
(Image from Twinkl)
2. ADHD Friendly Displays
It is as much about the environment as much as what you specifically do yourself that can make a difference. You can cater for students with ADHD not only through your teaching but also with how you organise your classroom. A simple trick is keeping the front of the classroom free from displays or posters, so your pupils can keep their attention on you much more easily. Gather flip pages from previous learning close to the relevant display board so that this helps the child to locate scaffolds. Try to keep displays simple but effective in their messages, lots of colours and graphics can be overwhelming and hard to focus on.
3. Assistive Technology
Used correctly, digital tools can be an incredible aid for children with ADHD. They can help improve focus and productivity and ultimately make learning more accessible for them. If your school has the funds to be able to provide it, see if they can use a laptop to type up work rather than writing, as writing can be a large barrier for children with ADHD. The software
‘Clicker’ is also a great resource using words, sounds and pictures to keep children engaged and motivated with their learning. It is highly customisable to suit your pupils needs with learning broken down into small steps. Clicker is a great tool for children developing their communication skills as well, you can check it out here: Clicker - Literacy Software | Crick Software
I use this myself daily with low attainers and also those with SEND/ behavioural challenges and improved independence and results over time are phenomenal!
Marianne Baird is an Assistant Headteacher and SENCo for Sunny Bank Primary School.
"The best thing about Clicker is that it boosts children’s confidence and allows them to see themselves as writers. It removes barriers to writing, and it takes away some of that cognitive demand and overload, so children can record their ideas and gain confidence."
Another great resource for the classroom is speech to text and text to speech tools. These are great because it removes the reading or writing barrier your pupil may have. With #text to ##speech, if you assign a large text for your pupils to read, for a pupil with ADHD they may have a hard time reading or focusing. With a push of a button, they can convert this text into speech and listen to the text instead. For those with writing challenges, speech to text can be beneficial so pupils can speak their work and the programme will automatically convert it to text. Many have added functions of deleted filler words such as ‘like’ ‘and’ ‘um’, so clever! This means your pupils can produce better quality work if #writing is a barrier for them. There are many dictation programmes available, but here is few to browse at:
4. Zones of Regulation
Issues with self-regulating have been long associated with conditions such as ADHD. It is common for children with ADHD to become overwhelmed with emotion which in turn leads to difficulty labelling their emotions. This becomes problematic because if we don't know what the emotion is we are feeling, it is difficult to know how to bring ourselves back to our baseline. The zones of regulation can help a child identify the emotion they are feeling and use strategies to help them self-regulate.
(Image from TES)
5. Timers
Timers can be a great tool to use alongside visual timetables in your classroom. You can use them as an external cue to help your child stay focused, as well as giving predictability for when a task or activity is about to end. This makes transitions much simpler for you and your pupil. Visual timers, in particular, can be fantastic tools that allow the child to visually see the time going down, without having to have contextual knowledge of time. There are many great visual timers available on the market, or alternatively, lots of websites offer visual timetables aimed for children such as this one: Classroom Timers - Fun Timers (online-stopwatch.com)
6. Allow for Movement
Although it goes against traditional methods of teaching where the teacher stands at the front and everyone sits and listens, for children with ADHD this can be nearly impossible. Everything in their body is telling them they need to move, so by forcing children to stay seated, they have to focus all their energy on not moving and will not be paying absolutely no attention to what you are saying. Instead, you can accommodate for ##ADHD pupils physically through several methods: allowing fidget toys at desks (school permitting), having a standing working station available, or allowing children access to a wobble stool or yoga ball to sit on when they feel they need a wriggle. TTS is a fab website for ideas to set up sensory circuits or movement equipment to use within the classroom.
I hope some of these tools can be of help to you and your class. Unfortunately, none of them are a magic wand and #ADHD can be a tricky thing to understand, especially when there is a class full of other children to also think about. The good thing is that a lot of these tools are great for any child, and so implementing them class wide can make your life easier, as well as benefiting other children in the process. The great thing about tools such as these is you can see what works for your children and adapt them to suit. If your children are old and mature enough, get them involved in the conversation! They may be able to give valuable feedback about what will help them succeed and keep you a happy teacher!
The next article will provide supportive ideas, advice and tips for parents, families and carers of those with suspected #ADHD. This will hopefully help to manage the symptoms and behaviours seen mostly at home to make navigating the journey through referral, assessment and (hopefully) diagnosis more manageable.
As ever, please share - this may just reach someone who is sick of trawling through the minefield of jargon-filled content and lead to the even small wins for and their students/ loved ones.
Lucy x