Huntington Connects
Showing 11-20 results of 28 articles matching "learning"
Using Podcasts to Boost Learning for Kids with ADHD
Plenty of students struggle to pay attention in classrooms. But children with ADHD struggle to focus, process information quickly, and translate information into learning and understanding. At times, traditional classroom teaching methods fall short for kids with ADHD. Fortunately, today there are a many tools and techniques available to supplement classroom teaching for kids with a variety of learning styles. Many of these tools embrace a multi-sensory approach, where kids engage with new material not just visually but also through their other senses of hearing, touch, and sometimes even taste and smell.
“Alexa” for Kids with ADHD
One of the most popular gifts of this past holiday season, according to CNN Money, was Amazon’s Echo Dot, featuring their digital assistant, Alexa. If you are one of the millions of people who recently brought Alexa into their home, then you are now learning that Alexa can do all kinds of things, from giving you the weather forecast to turning on the lights in your home or operating any number of Internet of Things connected devices. If you have a child with ADHD, then you’ll be happy to know that Alexa can also help with many of the challenges that you and your child face every day.
Taking a Whole-Child Approach to Treating ADHD
When parents seek out the help of a psychologist or meet with their child’s teacher, discussions typically focus on finding solutions for ADHD-related challenges. While these problem-focused conversations are necessary - and are often very helpful - they run the risk of being so ADHD-centric that a child’s strengths and positive qualities are overlooked. As a result, a child isn’t really discussed as a whole person, but is instead talked about only within the context of his or her ADHD. Ultimately, this focus does the child a disservice, because opportunities that capitalize on the child’s strengths are overlooked.
Dealing with Back-to-School Anxiety
Everyone feels anxious on the first day of school. Even kids who love school and look forward to the first day feel some butterflies in their stomach as they wonder what their new teacher and classmates will be like. For kids with ADHD who have struggled with school in the past and whose relationships with classmates have often been challenging, the back to school jitters that they experience are often more intense than most. Even if they don’t talk about feeling nervous, the anxiety will still be there and may show up in other ways – like uncharacteristic irritability, difficulty sleeping, and complaints about stomachs and headaches. As a parent it can be hard to know how to help your child cope with his or her anxiety. In addition to strategies that help with everyday anxiety, like taking deep breaths or distracting yourself from anxious thoughts, there are a few important things you can do to help your child cope leading up to the first day of school.
Fun Activities that will Get Kids Learning this Summer
Children experience significant learning loss during the summer months when they do not engage in learning activates. This summer slide is responsible for up to two months of lost learning in math and up to one month of lost learning in reading. For kids with ADHD, who often finish the school year behind their peers academically, summer learning activities not only help offset the summer slide, but also help build skills that may have been missed during the school year. Unfortunately, because school is more challenging and stressful for kids with ADHD, they are typically more resistant to participating in summer learning activities. While structured academic enrichment activities are an important part of any summer learning plan, there’s also room for fun learning activities at home that won’t feel quite so much like schoolwork. When kids with ADHD are doing something that they enjoy, their resistance disappears and their enthusiasm soars!
Four Online Study Tools that Keep You Focused
When you have ADHD, keeping your mind focused and engaged while you’re studying isn’t always easy. An ADHD brain thrives on novelty, mental challenges, and exciting visuals – three things that the act of memorizing rote information rarely provides. Fortunately there are a few dynamic online study tools that can make typical study strategies more engaging and effective. They allow you to move past the basics of rereading material or reviewing your notes by engaging your mind through active learning techniques that will take your study methods to the next level.
Stressed about Finals? Try Adding Pre-Exam Music to Your Study Plan
With final exams quickly approaching, now is the time to put together a rock-solid test-taking plan that will help you reach your full potential this year. All of the usual final exam advice still holds true: study hard, get a good night’s sleep, eat a high protein breakfast, and keep your stress levels down by making time for exercise and time with friends. This year, consider also adding some inspiring pre-exam music to your finals plan to help take your exam performance to the next level.
Tips for Teens: Changing your Study Mindset
You’ve got a big test coming up at the end of the week, and you’re dreading it. You know you should start studying now so that you’ll be well prepared, but whenever you think about studying your mind gets flooded with negative thoughts: There’s so much material to study for this test, where will I even start? What if I can’t find my notes? What if my notes aren’t good enough and they don’t make any sense to me now? What if I put all of this time into studying and then fail the test anyway? All of these thoughts can quickly send you into avoidance mode. Before you know it, it’s the evening before the test and you haven’t studied at all.
How Soon is Too Soon? Diagnosing ADHD in Young Children
Getting kids the help they need as early as possible will set them up for success later in life. There are numerous early intervention programs available for kids who fail to meet their developmental milestones on time or struggle with speech problems. But when it comes to behaviors related to ADHD, like impulsivity, hyperactivity, and difficulty paying attention in young children it can be harder to identify the source of the problem, and harder to know how to help. How soon is too soon to start thinking about an ADHD diagnosis, and when can you start to intervene?
More Focused with Media?
Your child says that listening to music or watching television helps him or her concentrate when doing schoolwork. But is he or she right? Sitting down to concentrate on homework is hard when you have ADHD. Not surprisingly, kids, teens, and their parents are always on the lookout for ways to make homework less painful. For many families that I’ve worked with, arguments often erupt over whether or not the television, music, or other noise should be allowed during homework. Desperate to help their kids get their work done, many parents are willing to make more concessions during homework time than they would for other activities and chores throughout the day. But do things like television and music really help kids with ADHD concentrate? Or are they simply fun distractions? Let’s look at what the science has to say.
