Image by James F Clay via Flickr
When it comes to teaching kids with ADD, it may be hard for teachers to understand what they’re going through. Many of these students don’t qualify for an IEP because most kids with ADD are very bright and aren’t disabled enough to qualify. So what can you as a teacher do to help?
Extra Allowances
Although these kids don’t qualify for IEPs, extra help is still needed. One of the first things you can do is allow them to do things you wouldn’t for most students. For example, while taking a test, it may be helpful to let them stand or move around. If you have a quiet area in the classroom with cubicle walls, allowing them to study or take tests there will help because they will be less distracted by other students.
Additional Help
Kids with ADD often need extra help with certain thing such as having someone write down their answers. Many times, what happens in the case of a scribe is that the scribe will write down exactly what the student says with not capitalizing or punctuation. Then the student will go through and add those into the text. Another thing that might help is having someone read the questions to the student and working with the student one-on-one.
The main thing when it comes to helping students with ADD is to be understanding of what they’re going through. Many think because they don’t see anything outwardly wrong with them that it’s not as bad as they say. ADD can run from being slight annoying to highly debilitating so take it on a case-by-case basis.
