Parents and teachers often say that children with attention and executive functioning challenges struggle to complete written reports and essays. Students often say they don’t know where to start. Flexible structuring can help. In this article, Dr. Davenport suggests a number of accommodations that can help struggling students prepare written essays and reports.
Author: Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.
For 25 years, Dr. Davenport's career has been focused on helping improve the lives of children, teens, college students, and families struggling with ADHD, anxiety, OCD, depression, oppositional-defiant behavior, learning disorders, and related executive functioning challenges. Call 817.421.8780 to find out how he can help you.
Purpose + Structure = Better Writing
Teaching your student to recognize the purpose and structure of different types of paragraphs can help improve his internal structure for expressing himself in writing. Start with these examples based on his reasons for writing. To Outline the Steps in a Process The process paragraph or sequential paragraph details a series of steps needed to…
Writing Purposeful Paragraphs
Children and teens with attention, language, learning, and executive functioning difficulties often struggle to understand and develop the structure of writing. As a result, it can be hard for them to organize their good ideas into good written paragraphs and reports. Struggling students can benefit from learning how to organize their ideas based on the…
Inferring: Reading Between the Lines
Sometimes an author doesn’t tell you exactly what’s happening, but gives you just enough clues so you can figure it out yourself. Inferring involves making a logical guess based on facts in the text plus what you already know from life. Making inferences helps good readers better understand the text. Inferring also builds interest to continue…
Reading to Compare and Contrast
Comparing and contrasting is an important skill. It helps your teen focus on specific similarities and differences in characters in a story or ways of doing things in science. This not only helps with reading comprehension but is an essential skill in writing reports and taking tests in middle school, high school and college. Try…
One Thing Leads to Another: Reading for Cause and Effect
The idea behind cause and effect can be summed up by the statement “One thing leads to another.” Understanding cause and effect, and the relationship between them, can make your child or teen a better reader. Try these suggestions.
Reading for Details
Details are easy to miss when a student is reading quickly in order to get on to more fun and exciting tasks. Reading for details often becomes a boring and monotonous task that can make your student tired and less attentive. Have her try these suggestions to help her focus on and capture the important…
Home Project Planner: Ten Steps to Better Planning & Communication about Home Projects
The “Home Project Planner” is designed to help spouses communicate and organize projects at home. In this article, Dr. Davenport explains how to use this downloadable tool.
Improving Consistency in the Classroom
One of the most frustrating aspects of attention and executive functioning challenges for teachers is “consistent inconsistency.” Day-to-day, even hour-to-hour, our sustained attention and other executive skills can vary significantly. Family and educators are reminded that one of the hallmark characteristics of executive functioning problems is the variability of work performance across settings. Students perform more consistently on…
Positive Behavior Management in the Classroom
Difficult classroom behavior is often difficult to manage. “Behavior” as it is used here includes not only over-activity and impulsiveness, but also distractibility and day-dreaming. For example, embarrassing a day-dreaming child in front of his peers is not positive behavior management. Consider these alternatives. Structuring Instead of confronting students continually on behaviors that are inappropriate,…
Flexibly Structured Classroom Accommodations
Classroom accommodations are a vital part of the management process for children and teens who struggle with executive functioning problems. Consider using “structured flexibility” with struggling students. Structuring can assist students in improving their executive functioning weaknesses while the flexibility of accommodations can facilitating success in their academic and personal efforts. Structuring Consider these ways to…