Adaptations and Modifications to Help Students with Attention Problems

The following study adaptations or modified learning strategies are ideally suited for children having difficulty paying attention to tasks and completing assignments. Teachers can easily adapt these strategies for classroom use or to use with several students at a time.
  1. Before the child begins to work on a task, have him identify and list the steps for completing it, including a time estimate both for each step and for the whole task. You can write the estimates on a piece of paper or index card to prompt the child when the time to complete each step is near.
  2. Write the list of steps on an index card (a key word or a key phrase for each step is enough), and have the child write the same list on a notepad or an index card. As the child completes each step, she crosses out the step off the list.
  3. Provide a timer or stopwatch for the child to monitor her work time.
  4. Give the child ample warning when an activity is about to change. For example, you can say, “You have five more minutes of work time left. In five minutes, we move to _____.”
  5. Make sure the child knows exactly how long he has to work on the task. Set up benchmarks like, “Pages 12 and 13 should be completed by 11:15.”
  6. Read the directions aloud, and have the child follow along, underlining or highlighting the most important information, explanations, key words, and/or steps. In addition, the child writes the correct number above each step, e.g. 1, 2, and 3.
  7. Break a longer task into several smaller and easier tasks. For example, using index cards or a notepad, the child writes down each smaller step required to complete the assignment. The child works on one index card or step at a time, keeping all the other index cards out of sight. As the child completes each step, he throws away the card for that step, moving to the next index card.
  8. Give reduced assignments to your inattentive child, so that he can complete work independently and for longer time. For example, the inattentive child completes only five problems of the twenty problems on a page, or completes the odd numbered problems but not the even numbered problems.
  9. You can reduce the amount of visual material that the child needs to pay attention to by drawing a circle around or tracing with your finger (framing) the important information on the chart or diagram. Teach the child to consistently draw circles around and/or highlight important visual information.
  10. When you are handling an inattentive and unfocused child, keep your expectations humble and real. One task left without completion is not a big deal when the child managed to finish two other tasks. The two completed tasks, however, are a big deal; acknowledge the child’s success and reward her effort.
On my 11-page article, Helping the Unfocused Mind: Teaching Strategies for Students Having Difficulty Getting and Maintaining Attention, the important issue of attention problems in schools, including a wide variety of strategies, is explored in full. To read the article, click here.
A Call to All Teachers:


Proudly announcing our new group for educators worldwide, “We Teach the World.” Our aim is to connect teachers and related school personnel all over the world, so that we can share much-needed ideas, strategies, and lesson plans as well as all kinds of resources in classroom management and in student discipline. Coordinating our effort worldwide, we can tell each other where to find important resources and information. If you administer a teaching blog or have created educational resources to facilitate our job, you are welcome to share them here. As long as they contribute to education, we want to know of your business. Teachers with questions, post them here; mentors and seasoned teachers, your valuable experience and unique perspective matter to us, so make your voices heard. Because isolated, we teachers are imaginative, resourceful and resilient, but connected, connected we are imaginative, resourceful, resilient AND powerful. To join us, click on, “We Teach the World.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Improving Children's Compliance- Part 2: Mastering the Alpha Command

Image
On my last blog post, “ Improving Children’s Compliance- Part 1: Kinds of Commands ,” we learned about the three most common kinds of commands: the initiating command, the terminating command, and the mixed command. With an initiating command , we start behavior; with the terminating command , we end behavior. The mixed command aims at, first, terminating the behavior that we do not want, and then start a new behavior, or initiate the specific behavior that we want. (To read this blog post in full, click on the link at the bottom.) Another way in which we can analyze commands is in terms of both their efficiency and compliance rate; most specifically, distinguishing between the beta command and the alpha command . Details of each kind of command follow. Forehand and McMahon developed a list of five beta commands , or commands with lower efficiency and reduced compliance, that is still relevant today (As presented on Walker and Walker, 1991): 1.       The Chain Command or gi
Read more

What is Psycho-Education?

Image
In the broader sense, psycho-education refers to the education given to people who are living with emotional disturbances. The rationale behind a psycho-educational approach is that, with a clear understanding of the mental condition, and self-knowledge of own strengths, community resources, and coping skills, the individual is better equipped to deal with the problem and to contribute to his or her own emotional well-being. The core psycho-educational principle is education has a role in emotional and behavioral change . With an improved understanding of the causes and effects of the problem, psycho-education broadens the person’s perception and interpretation of the problem, and this refined view positively influences the individual’s emotions and behavior. Consequently, improved awareness of causes and effects leads to improved self-efficacy (the person believing that he is able to manage the situation), and improved self-efficacy leads to better self-control. In other words, the
Read more

Helping the Unfocused Mind: Teaching Strategies for Students Having Difficulty Getting and Maintaining Attention

Image
As Levine (2002) states, attention is the brain’s manager, including a complicated network of controls that regulate most of the processes involved in learning and behavior. Levine, an authority in brain research and founder of "All Kinds of Minds", adds that attention does not accomplish anything on its own, but rather it helps the brain determine what to do, when, and for how long. Children who struggle paying attention in the classroom, also known as children with short attention span and/or inattentive students, frequently exhibit problem behaviors such as: •Distracted by background stimuli (irrelevant visual, auditory, and/or tactile stimuli) •Shifting from one uncompleted task to another task that is also left unfinished •Losing and/or misplacing the books and materials necessary for completing the task; forgetful •Do not pay attention to details, and due to this, they make careless mistakes •Do not seem to listen •Difficulty organizing tasks (what comes first, ne
Read more