[Catalist] Teaching Science to Students with ADHD

[Paul Walker]

Hi Greg

EP sounds like a good thing. My must ask how expensive is it as it may prohibit it being as an option 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 1 Jun 2018, at 3:55 pm, Greg Munyard <gmunyard at kennedy.wa.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jessica
>  
> The kids we have at Kennedy Baptist College who have ADHD are by no means the worst in this spectrum. However, they still benefit from some different instruction techniques to maintain engagement and control. Depending upon your funding and electronic device availability, you could think about online instruction . We are finding the engagement levels have been excellent with Education Perfect. Now I don’t have specific figures for this, but the general consensus from our Science teachers is that EP is providing excellent content in a way that engages and captures their interest and attention. In addition, the benefit for teachers has been the assessment tools that are available, with anything assigned and completed marked automatically. The feedback to the students is immediate and then for areas in which they have struggled in the assessments, EP assigns catchup tasks that explore these weaker aspects further, giving them better mastery of the material. In addition, EP will provide feedback to parents via email of the lessons completed or not completed.
> My experience has been that ADHD kids tend to be highly visual learners, this has proven valuable for many of our students (and their parents!).
> The content is mapped to the Australian Curriculum, and our Year 10’s are now no longer purchasing textbooks, using EP as their source of homework material. We cover the course material in class and will have the students complete some EP lessons during class time as an adjunct to the white board and PowerPoint presentations we are producing.
> The course material is totally flexible, and just recently I was able to assign revision tasks in EP for my Year 11 ATAR Human Biology students in preparation for their exams that matched what we had covered in class from the syllabus.
>  
> Admittedly, my experience specifically with ADHD students is limited, but after 41 years in the classroom, there have been many such students who have crossed my path, including those currently in my classes. EP is probably the best thing to have surfaced in all my years of teaching to bring the level of engagement, quality and feedback needed in multi-needs classrooms. It’s definitely worth a look.
>  
> Regards
>  
>  
> Greg Munyard
> Senior Teacher – Science
> <image001.png>
>  
>  
>  
> From: Catalist <catalist-bounces at lists.stawa.net> on behalf of Jessica Van der merwe <jessica.vdm at icloud.com>
> Reply-To: "catalist at lists.stawa.net" <catalist at lists.stawa.net>
> Date: Friday, 1 June 2018 at 8:32 am
> To: "catalist at lists.stawa.net" <catalist at lists.stawa.net>
> Subject: Re: [Catalist] Teaching Science to Students with ADHD
>  
> Hi Michael,
>  
> Thank you so much for the encouragement and all the resources. I will be having a look though then ASAP. I do use the buddy system but probably not as much as I could for my ADHD students. 
>  
> Kind regards,
>  
> Jess
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 31 May 2018, at 9:02 pm, Michael McGarry <mmcgarry44 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Teaching Science to Students with ADHD
> Greetings Jess Bent,
> Your students are very fortunate to have you as their science teacher. On reading your e-post to CATALIST, I know that you are a dedicated, caring and competent science teacher who is ‘challenged’ managing the disruptive behaviour of your ADHD students, while doing the job that you love in delivering “top-quality science” to ALL your students.   
> I still recall trying to manage the behaviour of a Year 8 boy with ADHD who would swing to and fro his extended body from the doorframe when entering and leaving his classrooms. His final act was to climb onto the roof of our two-story secondary school. He was taken away by two WA police officers from our school and he never returned.   
> Jess I suggest that you approach your school administrators, including your Head of Science, to arrange for a ‘buddy’ teacher to come to your classroom to remove and supervise, on the set written tasks, the most-disruptive ADHD student who is not allowing other students to learn “top-quality science”.
> Websites that may suggest useful ideas for teaching ADHD students:
> URL 1: http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/principals/participation/tipsmanagingadhdinclass.pdf
> URL 2: https://research.avondale.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1095&context=teach
> URL 3: https://www.umassd.edu/dss/resources/facultystaff/howtoteachandaccommodate/howtoteachadhd/
> URL 4: https://npjscilearncommunity.nature.com/users/19823-susan-magsamen/posts/16267-the-science-of-adhd-podcast
> URL 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kaw2K1ctaoY
> URL 6: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intuitive-parent/201605/us-schools-and-the-astounding-rise-in-adhd
> PLEASE NOTE: Unfortunately the website at URL 6 perpetuates the Neuromyth of Learning Styles.
> URL 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_SQrRa73U0
> Neuromyths are common misconceptions about brain mechanisms that are not based on empirical evidence provided by rigorous, neuro-scientific research. Neuromyths usually arise from misunderstanding or a misreading and, in some cases, a deliberate perversion of neuro-scientific evidence by commercial sellers of ‘unproven’, “brain-based learning” programs that are frequently purchased by ‘neuroscience-naïve’ educators and parents.
> Best Wishes,
> Michael John McGarry
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