Thank you to all of our professional educators who dedicate themselves to our children! We know how difficult it can be working with ADHD children, so here are your teacher tips for the week, brought to you by the ADHD Information Library and ADDinSchool.com. This is a sampling of over 500 classroom interventions for your use at http://www.ADDinSchool.com.

Here are some tips on Increasing Your ADHD Students Time On Task:

Promote and reward the student's time on task, never time off task. Give a minute timer to keep on his desk. Ask the child how long he thinks it would take to perform a certain task. Let him set his own time and race against the timer.

One of the hallmarks of attentional problems is the difficulty with sustaining attention on tasks over time. Students with attentional problems may need different levels of external/internal stimulation to enhance task focus.

Students with attentional problems do better in classrooms with four walls than in an "open pod" arrangement. Open pods allow too many visual and auditory distracters throughout the day.
 
Along with breaking up the need for sustaining attention for a long period, your student would do better when allowed frequent breaks to move around inside and outside the classroom. This may vary from a daily outside walk, doing errands around the building, to classroom stretching exercises.

Your student tends to lose focus and his activity level may increase during the day. Therefore, schedule the most demanding attentional tasks in the morning.

Your student may get overwhelmed with large assignments. His attention may wander after guided practice on similar tasks. Adjust the assignment down to smaller intervals. Give the assignment one sheet at a time. Assign every third problem, rather than every one, for completion to reflect mastery level. Cut apart single worksheets into strips. Tailor guided practice to occur during those time periods. Schedule breaks after this optimum attention time period and then return to the assignment.

Seat work is often extremely difficult. This can become compounded when the teacher is instructing another small group. Check on your student as much as possible or have him check?in with the teacher. Consider using a point system.

Since a characteristic of students with an attentional problem is the seeking of highly stimulating materials, computer-assisted instruction and drill can be highly successful and may also enhance keyboarding skills as well as fine-motor coordination.

Hopefully these will help the ADHD students in your classroom to be more successful. You can learn more about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder at the ADHD Information Library.