Teach Students With ADHD

An ADHD child can make the classroom a difficult and frustrating place for every one, but with a few management strategies you can achieve success.

Steps

 * 1)  Open clear lines of communication with parents from day 1, some parents avoid teachers because they feel they are being judged for their ADHD child's behavior. Be open and sympathetic when discussing the problems.
 * 2) Find out if the child is on medication, special diets or other types of treatment and what needs to be done at school to maintain treatment.
 * 3) Find out if there are any other secondary problems such as learning difficulties, social problems, oppositional defiance disorder and so on.
 * 4) Structure lots of routine into the day. Have a morning routine, an after lunch routine and so on.  If there is consistency and the ADHD child's knows what to expect then there will be better behavior.
 * 5) Sit them close to the front and close to you, as well as next to a focused student who will provide a good influence but not be easy to distract.
 * 6) Break work down into small manageable chunks.  If there are many tasks to complete have a tick off sheet where the child can tick off items as they are completed.
 * 7) Have a consistent consequence for poor behavior like time out. Use it every time the child misbehaves, avoid changing the consequences or the ADHD child will have to keep testing to see what will happen next.
 * 8) Keep junk food out of the classroom. It makes ADHD much worse.  Discourage pizza days, food rewards and so on where possible.
 * 9) Use lots of praise and positive reinforcement.
 * 10) Reinforce quickly, if there is good behavior praise and reward quickly, if there is bad behavior set consequences quickly.
 * 11) Avoid excessive warnings. One warning is needed only.
 * 12) Keep lessons interactive, ask questions, use lots of different learning methods, keep it fun, use discussions and so on.