Writing Supports for Kids with ADHD or LD: Tips for Parents
October 14, 2012
Writing is a frustrating, tedious task for many kids with ADHD and Learning Disabilities, because it is so complex. Written language involves the integration of numerous skills and processes, some of which are their areas of weakness (e.g., planning and organization, memory, spelling, attention to detail, language structure, graphomotor skills, self-monitoring, and the speed of written output. See my blog “Why Writing is Often a Struggle for Students with ADHD and/or LD“. The following are ways to provide effective support and help for your child with writing assignments:
Getting them Started: Pre-Planning
- Realize that it may take your child much longer than many other students to create written products. It is, therefore, important to try to get a ‘jump start’ on any written assignments. Ask the teacher to send home the assignment description and directions as early as possible.
- Make a few extra copies of the assignment sheet and post in strategic locations in your home.
- If there is any ambiguity about the assignment (it isn’t clear to you or your child what needs to be done), contact the teacher immediately. Make sure teacher expectations for the assignment are clarified.
Note: During the past decade or so, the trend in most school districts is that teacher assignments are designed to address the state/district content and performance standards for each grade level. Each grade has certain content and skills which must be taught, and performance criteria is given as to whether students demonstrate that skill ‘at standard’, ‘below standard’ or ‘above standard’. As a result, when giving students writing assignments, many teachers are now providing a rubric along with the assignment. A rubric is a tool for scoring/evaluating (for example, on a 1-4 or 1-5 scale) a student’s piece of work based on specific criteria that have been provided.
- Rubrics can be generic or created to address specific needs. There are many good sources on the Internet to see what rubrics might look like, such as: www.Rubrics4teachers.com
- Rubrics are very useful tools not only for evaluation of the final written product, but for pre-organizing and pre-structuring how to write the paper. They are very helpful to students with ADHD and Learning Disabilities, because they provide the structure and guidance needed to help them meet their grade level writing standards.
- Sometimes open-ended writing assignments are most frustrating – trying to think of a topic of interest to write about. With these types of assignments, you can help your child by talking with him or her about experiences shared. Ask specific questions that might trigger topics of interest. (Example, “Do you remember how you felt when you dove off the high board for the first time?”). Help your child try to find a topic that he/she will be motivated to write about.
- Graphic organizers are used by teachers at all grade levels and subject areas. They are very useful tools to help students visually organize ideas/concepts/topics. They greatly enhance comprehension of subject matter, and are very helpful in the writing process for organizing thoughts prior to writing. Many teachers provide a specific graphic organizer for students to use in planning for a writing assignment. If your child’s teacher doesn’t provide a tool for pre-structuring assistance, you may want to find one of your own. There are many resources available for graphic organizers. One excellent online resource for free graphic organizers is Daily Teaching Tools http://www.dailyteachingtools.com/free-graphic-organizers-w.html. There are also some user-friendly and motivating software programs available for designing graphic organizers, such as Inspiration and Kidspiration. http://www.inspiration.com
- This assistance at the pre-writing stage is often the most valuable. Any opportunity to teach children to plan and organize before beginning an academic task is well worth our time and energy.
More Ways to Help Them Get Started
- Encourage your child to verbalize what he or she wants to say first. It is often helpful to do so into an audio recorder, which can then be played back and listened to. This way, your child can organize his or her thoughts – planning what to say and determining if it makes sense before even beginning to write.
- Use index cards for writing down ideas (e.g., topics, subtopics, details). It is easy to then spread them out, move them around, and cluster them together appropriately before writing. They can also be color-coded according to topic. For example, any words, phrases, sentences, information related to a particular topic could be written on index cards coded in the same color. You can also do the above using post-it notes instead of index cards, or jot down these ideas electronically (encourage your child to do so, or assist in the process).
- Let your child dictate the first couple of lines or paragraphs to you while you write them down. This often helps children who have trouble activating or getting started. Once they have this start, many times they are then able to continue independently.
Feedback and Editing Assistance
- You wouldn’t want to interrupt your child if he or she is ‘on a roll’ in order to offer feedback. However, if what your child is writing is ‘off target’ to what the guidelines for the assignment indicate must be included, it is probably less frustrating to help redirect your child before he or she has written a lot.
- When providing feedback to your child, be careful not to be critical or negative. State at least one positive comment about what he or she has written. Then, if your child’s written work is missing key elements you may ask for clarification. For example: “I’m not sure I understand what you mean in this sentence…You might want to add more information here so it makes sense to your reader.”
- Using the rubric (if one was provided) is a great way to offer feedback – based upon the grading criteria.
- It is often hard to get the cooperation or motivation from your child for this kind of detail work – editing. If it becomes a huge battle to go back and do this task, put it aside and try tackling later. If it always becomes a negative experience at home, let the teacher know the problem and ask for more help at school. It would be better to limit your involvement with editing. Many times kids are much more willing to accept corrective feedback or be willing to make corrections if suggested by someone other than parents.
Ways to Help with Editing
- Read the written work aloud with your child while pointing to each word. Doing so, your son or daughter should be able to hear if what was written was what he or she had intended to say.
- If this is a rough draft, some misspelled words may be pointed out and corrected, but don’t worry about more than a few at a time. A rough draft is a work in progress and it’s not your responsibility to identify or correct all the ‘flaws’.
- Do help if you notice incomplete sentences by asking questions to complete the thought (e.g., so that the sentence can be fixed to include both a subject and a predicate).
- Encourage your child to check for capitalization and final punctuation marks.
- It is helpful to have lists of words available to improve your child’s writing. For example, words that describe feelings (delighted, anxious), words to use instead of ‘said’ (demanded, whispered, announced, hollered). Models or lists of ‘connector’ or ‘transition’ words such as: words used to compare things ( in the same way, similarly, likewise), words used to contrast things (on the other hand, however, yet), words used to summarize ( in conclusion, consequently). There are a lot of resources that have such lists available. You may want to ask your child’s teacher is he/she has any such lists available for a home copy.
- If your child writes very simple, basic sentences you may ask who, what, where, when questions to elicit information and details to help them expand their thoughts and write more interesting sentences. Part of the issue may be that your child is deliberately writing less descriptive sentences to avoid having to physically write down so many words. This is common for children with ADHD/LD to do so.
Helping with the Final Product
- Parents often need to provide support and assistance to their children at the ‘final product’ stage. If you help your child type final draft copies, make it a collaborative effort to whatever extent possible. Have your son or daughter participate and type a portion – which could be a few words, sentence(s), paragraph(s), or page(s) – depending on the age of your child and his/her capabilities.
- Assistance with projects requiring gluing, mounting, arranging spatially, etc. is often needed. Your guidance and overseeing to avoid the frustration your child will experience if his or her project doesn’t ‘look good’ is helpful. You will want to make sure your impulsive child first organizes and spatially arranges the layout prior to gluing/pasting or mounting.
Note: Please see my Pinterest board on Writing Strategies & Activities. It contains a lot of ideas that you may find very helpful. http://pinterest.com/sandrarief/writing-strategies-activities/
This blog is adapted from content in my books: How to Reach & Teach Children with ADD/ADHD and The ADHD Book of Lists
Tags: editing, graphic organizers, prewriting, rubrics, writing, written language
