Classroom accommodations are a vital part of the management process for students who struggle with sustained attention.  Parents are encouraged to collaborate with their students’ educators to consider these classroom accommodations designed to increase their focus on instructions and tasks while facilitating success in their academic and personal efforts.

Increase Focus on Instructions

Provide preferential seating to assist the student in focusing his or her concentration on the teacher and classroom activities. The student’s desk placement should be based on the individual student’s needs and the activity being completed. The student’s desk should be away from challenging students and not touching others’ desks if possible.

• Many students with ADHD can benefit from being near the teacher for prompting and redirection.  Experiment with seat location near the board and instructional area for the student who is mostly hyperactive, impulsive, or distracted by visual stimuli and internal thoughts.

• Some students who are distracted by noise may benefit from being seated near the back of the classroom, especially in a noisy situation. This eliminates the need for them to look around to identify the source of distracting sounds.

Some students benefit from a prearranged cueing system with the teacher when they are distracted. In this system, the teacher gives a visual signal or a verbal phrase (“Remember, I’m looking for good listeners.”) when it appears the child is distracted. This cue can remind the child to pay attention without direct confrontation or loss of self-esteem.

Educators are encouraged to consider a student’s attention when giving directions.

• Begin an instruction with his or her name: this increases the likelihood he may be attending by the time you deliver the direction.

• When giving instructions, it can be helpful to establish eye contact, give directions one step at a time, provide demonstrations of the desired outcome, and have the student paraphrase what you have said.

• To help with sustained attention, it may be helpful to avoid complex verbal directions, information, and discussion. Keep instructions short or give information in chunks. For example, saying, “Computer is all done” is less intense than, “You’ve already been on the computer for fifteen minutes and some of your classmates didn’t get a turn yesterday, so you need to get off the computer now.”

• Give positive directions to allow for inattention: tell the student exactly what you want him to do and minimize the use of the words “don’t” and “stop” as he may not attend the word “don’t” and do exactly what you are telling him not to do. For example, say, “Please complete your work.” instead of “Don’t play on the iPad.”

• It can be helpful to check with a student with ADHD before he starts a multiple-step or multifaceted assignment to ensure that he understands all the steps.

• Allow a student with ADHD to ask questions before beginning and while completing multiple-step or multifaceted assignments.

Because copying from the board and note taking is hindered by poor sustained attention, organization, planning, prioritizing, and other executive functioning problems, students with ADHD can benefit from receiving copies of information on the board and teacher lectures so they will have the information needed to prepare for tests and complete assignments. In order to receive the copies of notes, students should continue to take notes to practice this skill using Note Taking Tips and Tools suggested.

Increase Focus on Tasks

Allow students to use “cue cards” for attending to and recalling the steps in multiple-step tasks. A cue card is an index card listing the steps to a multifaceted task. Research on cue cards shows a student can learn the steps faster than relying on his faulty executive skills. Also, when using cue cards he is less likely to ask, “What’s the next step?” in the classroom or at home.

When reading textbooks, a student with ADHD is urged to take a more active approach by recording answers to questions from a study guide or the end of the chapter as he reads. If these questions are not available, he could change bolded headers or key words into questions.

Allow a student with ADHD to use simple and highly structured graphic organizers in order to read actively and better understand, consolidate, and recall the information he is gathering.

• • Multiple-column charts can be helpful for listing who, what, where, when, why, and how for events or time periods in history.

  • Multiple-column charts can help him compare and contrast specific similarities and differences in literature, history, and science.

  • Fish-bone diagrams can help a student recognize cause/effect in textbooks and novels as he is reading.

  • Highly structured charts can be used to capture key literary aspects (setting, characters, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and literary elements).

  • Use of colored tape flags, underlining, highlighting, and a highly structured, simplified approach to annotating can help the older student quickly recognize “who, what, where, when, why, and how” as he is reading.

Check out my posts on Active Reading to learn more about using these tools.

The student with ADHD can benefit from using a checklist of key action steps for preparing written sentences, paragraphs, reports and essays.

When writing, some students could benefit from using a word bank. It may be especially helpful if the word bank is set up so that he can easily identify nouns, verbs, modifiers, transition words, and other key categories. Without this designation, his working memory may be overwhelmed and the student may not benefit from the task.

Because of poor sustained attention during homework time, parents and educators are encouraged to consider ways to reduce the amount of time it takes the student to complete homework by reducing the number of repetitive tasks.

• When possible, reduce the number of math problems or other repetitive tasks the student is required to complete. Completing a few problems well while he has good sustained attention may be better than asking him to complete a lot of problems with limited attention to task.

• If she is expected to write answers in complete sentences that reflect the question asked, have the student do this for half of the questions in order to show that she can complete the assigned task. Then, allow her to answer the rest of the questions in phrases or words.

• Allow him to dictate lengthy writing assignments to a parent or support person at school. This individual should write what the student says verbatim and then allow him to make changes, without his or her assistance.

Need Help Obtaining or Implementing Accommodations for Your Student?

Call 817.421.8780 or email us to make an appointment today.

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(c) 2010-2020, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.