15 Writing Tricks for ADHD Students

Ways that teachers and parents can help ADHD children overcome their fear of writing essays and papers for school.

by Chris Zeigler Dendy

Parents and teachers often complain about the difficulty of getting children with attention deficit disorder (ADHD) to write an essay or report that is longer than three sentences. Our children need extra time to organize their thoughts and put together a sentence.

They have difficulty picking an essay topic, locating appropriate resources, holding and manipulating information in their memory, organizing and sequencing the material, and getting it down on paper — all before they forget what they wanted to say.

The following strategies should ease your child’s difficulties with written expression.

Solutions: in the Classroom

• Start small and build skills. Ask students to write a paragraph consisting of only two or three sentences. As skills improve, students can write several paragraphs. Ask the student to write down his ideas on sticky notes.

Encourage students to group the notes with similar ideas on them, and to identify four or five concepts from those groupings. For example, topics related to the human body might include: blood, brain, eyes, fingers, eating, and walking. The student can arrange notes in a logical order, writing sentences that explain each key concept.

• Don’t grade early work. Sensitive students are discouraged by negative feedback as they are developing their writing skills.

• Select interesting topics. The best essay topics are those with which the student has had personal experience.

• Demonstrate essay writing. With the use of an overhead projector, the teacher can write a paragraph or an entire essay, explaining what she is doing at each step. “Let’s start with a topic sentence. Now let’s give an example.” Students can assist her by contributing sentences. ADDers are often visual learners, and tend to do better when they see the teacher work on a task.

• Give writing prompts. Students with ADD usually don’t generate as many essay ideas as their peers do. To increase their options, collect materials to stimulate choices. Read a poem, tell a story, show pictures in magazines, newspapers, or books.

• Don’t deduct points for poor handwriting or bad grammar — unless the assignment specifically measures these skills. If a child is working hard to remember and communicate, let some things slide.

• Use a graphic organizer. A graphic organizer asks basic questions about the topic and organizes material visually to help with memory recall. Distribute pre-printed blank forms for students to fill in, so they can reserve their effort for the most important task — writing the essay.

• Grade limited essay elements. To encourage writing mastery and to avoid overwhelming students, grade only one or two elements at a time. For example, “This week, I’m grading subject-verb agreement in sentences.” Tighter grading focus channels students’ attention to one or two writing concepts at a time.

• Encourage colorful description. ADHD students often have difficulty “dressing up” their written words. Have them add adjectives and use stronger, more active verbs in sentences. Create your own graphic organizer for adjectives by making a poster with categories and offering samples. For instance, “Appearance”: beautiful, dilapidated, gorgeous; “Physical Description”: size (enormous, tiny), shape (square, oval); age (old, antique); color (red, yellow); “Materials”: wood, silk, stone, plastic.

Solutions: at Home

• Encourage keeping a journal. Have your child write down his thoughts about his outing to the movies, visits to relatives, or a trip to a museum. Add some fun to the activity by asking your child to e-mail you his thoughts or text-message you from his cell phone.

• Assist with essay topic selection. Children with ADD have difficulty narrowing down choices and making a decision. Help your student by listening to all of his ideas and writing down three or four of his strongest topics on cards. Then review the ideas with him and have him eliminate each topic, one by one—until only the winner is left.

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• Brainstorm. Once the topic is identified, ask him for all the ideas he thinks might be related to it. Write the ideas on sticky notes, so he can cluster them together later in paragraphs. He can cut and paste the ideas into a logical sequence on the computer.

• Stock up on books, movies, games. They will introduce new vocabulary words and stimulate thinking. Explore these with your child and solicit his views.

• Dictate ideas to a “scribe.” Before your child loses his idea for the great American novel, or for his next English assignment, have him dictate his thoughts to you.

• Go digital. Children with ADD often write more slowly than their classmates. Encourage your child to start the writing process on a computer. She won’t lose her essay before it’s finished, and she can easily rearrange the order of sentences and paragraphs in a second draft.

This article comes from the Fall 2008 issue of ADDitude.

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