Matt mentioned in his reading refleciton that these tips are valid for everyone, not just kids with ADHD. For that reason he teaches his classes using these methods all the time as thought both he and all of his students have ADHD. When I was reading this article my exact thought was "wow this seems true for everyone."
But then I started to recall a conversation that I had the other day with the a teacher from Candler elementary. Their 4th graders came out with their one class o 4th and 5th grade combination "High Achievers" (HA) class for rock cycle last week. The first group I took out was loud, not especially observant, and fought for position in the front of the pack the whole time after I had asked them at least 5 times to please follow me instead of running out ahead. The second group was the HA class and they were pretty much the same exact way for the first minute of the hike. Then the teacher stopped them and said one time "If you are talking you will not be able to use your other senses to experience this hike. Listen to Carli and pay attention." The rest of the time they were incredible.
I didn't know that this group was in a special HA program, until after the hike. I mentioned to the teacher that I had noticed a big difference in their behavior form the previous group and she filled me in. She hypothesized that in normal classrooms instructions are repeated 7x.. That meant that kids are trained to only have to check into whats going on in classroom every couple of minutes to keep up. If instructions are only given once, then you must be listening ALL of the time to get it. To me it seemed like a really good point. Maybe the ADHD teaching tips do make it easier for the whole class to stay on the same page, but maybe that is not always a good thing. Maybe it shouldn't be easy. She said that a lot of the HA kids were recommended to the program because they were starting to have behavioral problems in normal classrooms because they were bored and not being challenged. I am not a classroom teacher and don't know if this happens often or not, but it seems like a pretty interesting thought and something to stay aware of.
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Totally agree, my HA (called PEP) classes have entirely different listening, working, participating and focusing behaviors. For them instruction/directions take less time. Still, I check with groups periodically to make sure everything part of task is well understood.
ReplyDeleteI am commenting on your post again, because we are the only three posters at the moment. Anyway, yes these practices can and should be used on classes as a whole. Not all of them of course, but most yes.
ReplyDeleteYes, a lot of time students that misbehave are just bored. Class is too easy for them so they act out in disgust. This is not always the case, but sometimes it is.
These two classes were very different on Friday. In some ways a class is composed of individuals, and if we could tailor our day to fit each ones needs that would be wonderful. The difficulty however of course is that what works for one child may not work for another child. It is great when at times those children can be grouped according to their levels. I do wonder though what happens when those same children then move on and are mixed. Are there ways work at having these children assist other children and work together?
ReplyDeleteI too talked with the teachers from Chandler but the 2nd group that came Tuesday. She was saying that some of these techniques talked about in the article really do work with everyone not just the ones with ADHD.
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