Archive for the ‘homework’ Category
After the post about Ron and his college homework, you’re probably ready for some positive hints on homework…and thanks to Alana Morales – here they are: Three Tips For Managing Homework Headaches!
In my neck of the woods (or desert, as it is), we are gearing up for the second quarter of school. This semester, I have experienced teacher battles, homework nightmares and medication debacles. All in all, a pretty normal school year for an ADHD family, wouldn’t you say?
One of the things that I have found myself doing is reevaluating my homework processes and making changes based on the day, the subject and the kids. A large part of the homework battle with ADHD kiddos is getting the homework home and then back to school. Part of this is finding out if they even have homework. As frustrating as this is, it is an essential skill to work on, because without the homework, there can be no grades. Here are some strategies that you can employ to make sure the homework makes it home:
1. From School To Home. – Use some sort of daily agenda. Have your student write down their class agenda and homework daily and if they have trouble doing this, ask the teacher to check it and initial off on it every day before your student leaves school. If they are having additional trouble with this step, ask the teacher if you can show up and write down the assignments for a few days or once a week and continue this until your student gets on track. (Kayla’s note: Check out the PAC-kit for this!)
- Make a homework folder. Sometimes homework gets lost in what I like to refer to as “The Abyss.” You may also know it by it’s more common name – the backpack. If your student has some organizational issues, make them a homework folder. Then, ANY work that is to come home can be put in this folder. My recommendation is to make the folder as difficult as possible to lose – make it a bright color or even a character folder. And plan on having several backups for the inevitable time it gets lost, ripped or otherwise unusable.
- Pick a study buddy. This is a person in the class who is responsible and can be called on the phone if your student ever misses an assignment or has a question about an activity.
2. At Home. – Make sure you have a designated homework area with supplies. After battling over spelling words or math problems, the last thing you want to do is have a kid lose their motivation just because you lack the proper materials.
- Schedule breaks. It’s tough to stay on task after trying to stay on task all day. Set a timer and let your kiddo take a break eveyrtime it goes off, provided they are working effectively while it is ticking away.
- Offer incentives. Offer some incentive based on their homework performance. Give Nerds, Smarties, or Sweet Tarts for each math problem completed or spelling word written correctly. It really helps with the immediate gratification issue.
3. Getting the Homework Back To School. Yes, kids need to be responsible, but let’s face it, our little darlings need a little more support in these areas.
- Make sure when an assignment is done, it immediately goes into the homework folder. Not on the table. Not on top of the backpack. In the folder. Trust me on this one.
- Use the agenda. Ask the teacher to sign the agenda to show that the nightly homework was turned in. It may seem like a lot of checks and balances, but until ADHD kids can use these skills consistently, it’s a good idea to make it as difficult as possible for them to forget.
Using these tips may seem like a lot of work and they are. But, in the end, if your student is able to get better grades, be less frustrated and build more self confidence, isn’t that worth the extra work?
———-Alana Morales is the author of Domestically Challenged: A Working Mom’s Survival Guide to Becoming a Stay at Home Mom. You can learn more about her at www.AlanaMorales.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/alanamorales for mom and ADHD tips.
PS If you’ve not read Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare, you really owe it to yourself to grab a copy before your next homework nightmare begins!
Recently, our oldest came home from college for a weekend, homework in tow. I know the child is 23 years old, but I was happy that he was able to find the assignment (okay, so it was online, but still). I was even happier that he had the correct book.
Ron’s homework was to write a comprehensive summary of three chapters in one of his business textbooks. Talk about boring. He’s pretty interested in it, though. He explained enough to show me he had a good grasp of the subject, although for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.
We had a good discussion about how hard it is for him to write. It’s still hard for him to focus, and it’s still hard for him to get his thoughts on paper. Here are some of the highlights of our conversation:
Ron: “I’m having a hard time with this I can’t summarize it like I want.” Me: “Just go through the chapter and summarize the topic sentence of each paragraph.”
Ron: “How’s that going to prepare me for real life? I want it to be in my own words. I might have to write a business report one day.”
“You’ll have a secretary. And it will be in your own words. Don’t over complicate things! Just get it over with. DO it.”
Good grief. He wanted to rewrite the chapter. It was a summary – not a research paper. The purpose of a summary is to summarize!
I reminded him to go through the chapter and make an outline with all the headings. He had done that already. (Does this that he was listening to me when he was in high school?)
Ron: “Writing isn’t as easy for me as it is for you and Ash.” Me: “Walking into a room full of friends and being friends with everybody in five minutes isn’t as easy for me as it is for you.”
“I just can’t get it from my brain onto the paper. I can talk about this until I’m blue in the face, but when I try to put it on paper, I blank out.” At this point, we’ve moved from a discussion to a rant, and he’s procrastinating. “That’s called a screen, bud. 21st century. Look at it and type.”
Ron still is frustrated by his difficulties. He still procrastinates. He’s still disorganized, although not overwhelmingly so. Ron still won’t do things that really would help – like speak his thoughts into a recorder, then transcribe them. Ron still works best in short spurts. He’d set a goal, work madly until he met it, then stop and play a video game or get something to eat. Ron is learning, and enjoying the learning, but not the studying. But at the end of the day, Ron is succeeding!
During one of the his breaks, I read him the story I’d written about one nightmare of a weekend when he left one of his assignments in his jeans pocket – and I washed it. It’s an hysterical story, one that will sound way familiar to you. Read it on the blog at http://www.adhd-inattentive.com/114, and you’ll understand I can write things like Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare.
Anyhow, while I was reading I left out his name, and when I finished, Ron said, “Who was that?!”
You’ve come a long way, buddy.
PS If you’ve not read Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare, you really owe it to yourself to grab a copy before your next homework nightmare begins!
Last week in the newsletter, I mentioned that all of our kids had come home for the weekend – Ron with college homework in tow. While he was taking a break, I read him an article I wrote back when he was in the tenth grade. Read, it, multiply it by four, and you’ll understand why I’m able to write stuff like Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare and Focus Pocus!
“Did you wash jeans? My Algebra assignments were in my pocket.”
Sure enough, crumpled up in the trash was a freshly laundered yellow sticky note, with penciled assignments too faded to read. So he pored through the Algebra II text, hoping for clues. No luck. My suggestions to call a friend were rebuffed, but finally, he gave in.
He asked if I had Ryan’s number, then went leafing through the phonebook to find the number. He needed her dad’s name, which I supplied, but she wasn’t home. So he went through three more absentee friends. He even called his youth pastor for another friend’s number. Nothing. An hour had passed in vain.”Change subjects. Do something else.” His Physical Science assignment was on a piece of paper in his Geometry book, which he couldn’t find. I had seen it in the car, and sure enough, it was there, soaked through, lying in a puddle of water that had leaked from another brother’s water bottle. The assignment still wasn’t to be found.
An hour and a half are now lost.”Go clean your room. You can call your friends later tonight.” So he goes upstairs, only to be distracted by an errant yellow jacket. He comes back down, insisting he shouldn’t be upstairs cleaning. After I warn him that my sting is more lethal than that of any bee, he comes back to get a flyswatter, but wastes more minutes describing the insect to me.
After much banging about, the insect is dead. It’s not a yellow jacket, but a large hornet. He proudly shows the creature to me, then threatens his brothers with it. After talking to the bird (the one who can burp), he heads back upstairs to work. His room, to his credit, gets done.
He also doesn’t mention he has any homework besides the mystery assignments. Since I don’t know he has more to do, he somehow figures he doesn’t have to complete it until Sunday.
So, Sunday afternoon rolls around. I have a meeting at 2:30, so after church we go out to eat, then the rest of the family waits for me. Of course, the homework is left at home. After I remind him, and then insist, he calls his friends to get his assignments. His friends are still gone, but I’ll bet their homework was finished.
At home, he finally makes contact with one friend, who gives him the Algebra homework. He also discovers that at some point he has lost his Geometry sheet, which is makeup for work he should have completed last week, and work he could have done on Saturday.
So I pore through his bookbag, and discover Latin papers wadded up in the History notebook, which is also full of Geometry notes. I’m overwhelmed by the disorganization. I discover a sheet that lists Tuesday as the due date for his Geometry notebook check, although he insists his teacher says it is due Thursday. I also go through all the drawers in his room. While he finishes his Algebra, I sort all his papers into subjects. I haven’t helped him all year, so I feel like I can help him in this without being an enabler.
It is now 11:30 pm on Sunday night. His Algebra is finished, almost. He has lost …..Oh, my gosh. I couldn’t have timed this better. As I am typing the above paragraph, he walks in. “Hey mom, you know that Geometry worksheet?” He doesn’t mention that it’s the one I just spent two hours looking for. “The reason I couldn’t find it was that it wasn’t a worksheet. It was a problem in the book. Can you come help me with it?”
So what do you think? Should I boil him in oil or feed him to the sharks?
PS If this story sounds WAY too familiar – sort of like a nightmare – then you need to read Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare. It’s our story of how the madness ended – and we woke up!
Don’t let the headline get to you. For some kids, math comes easy to them. Then there are the rest of us. Not to be stereotypical, but math can pose some special difficulties for our ADHD kids.
ADHD kids have a tendency to have difficulties with math facts, processing word problems and even following the order of operations. Special skills can help ease these troubles.
Here are three tips to help your kids survive and thrive math this year.
1. Make it fun. I know I keep saying this, but make the math fun. Despite common belief, you can make it fun. Let them do math facts online. Download a math game. In fact, you can even buy a math game for the Nintendo DS called Math Play
2.Do what works. Math can be troubling because you have to keep track of all those darn numbers. Here’s two ways to keep them in check. One unorthodox method is to take the notebook paper and turn it sideways. Then, when your student writes their numbers, they can keep them all in a row.
If you need a stronger way to keep track of the problems, have your student do their math homework on graph paper. If there isn’t enough room, let them write in two boxes per number. Since going to this method, I can actually read my son’s homework!
Another tip is to highlight the different operations in different colors. You could make addition green, subtraction yellow, multiplication blue and division pink. This will help remind our kiddos what operation they should be doing.
3. Practice, practice, practice. Unfortunately, the school day just keeps getting more and more busy. This means that there is less and less time for practicing basic math skills. Try to practice math facts 5 minutes a day or 10 minutes every other day. To make it easier, make a game of it. You can play bingo, have a scavenger hunt, play on the computer – whatever it takes.
Make sure they have samples of the exact type of problem they are working on. Modeling is very important with ADHD kids, especially since so many are visual learners.
Math can be fun…or at the worst, much less painful. Math is a necessary skill and all kids need to learn how to work problems effectively. Help take some of the stress out of math homework and become the math hero of your house today!
Do you have an ADHD/ADD educational issue you would like to see addressed? If so, contact Alana Morales on her blog at www.MommyADD.com.
Thanks as always to Alana for her great advice and excellent ADHD hints!
PS Don’t miss the special offer of getting Focus Pocus with a bonus copy of Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare!
Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder all have one thing in common – the inability to sustain and focus attention. But every child – ADHD or not – occasionally has problems staying on task and avoiding distraction.
As parents and teachers – we try to conjure up ways to help them focus. As if they were magical spells, we say such things as, “Listen!” “Pay attention!” “Stop daydreaming!” “Think!” “FOCUS!”
But the spells rarely work. To complicate things, once we find a trick that works, the magic wears off, and the clock strikes twelve. As a result, we are constantly looking for new hints, new strategies, and new ways to charm kids through that next session of homework or that next hour of math.
I’ve been there over and over again with my boys, my students, some of my friends, and even myself. With all of our attempts at alchemy, we did find a few things that worked.
“Focus Pocus” lists one hundred of our very best hints on how to help kids pay attention. They’ll help parents, they’ll help teachers, and most of all, they’ll help our kids.
Of course, none of the hints are really magical. None of them will work all the time. But chances are you’ll find at least one that will help you with the challenge you’re facing today. Tomorrow I’ll post some of the hints from Focus Pocus – 100 Ways to Help Your Child Pay Attention . You can read them all by getting your guide today!
PS Don’t miss the special offer of getting Focus Pocus with a bonus copy of Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare!
The human mind remembers best the first and last things it encounters. This is why telephone numbers and social security numbers are hyphenated. When studying with your child, sometimes it helps to break the sessions into small sets of information, so there are more beginnings and ends. If you have 20 vocabulary words, for example, study the first five after school, the second set right before dinner, the third set after dinner, and the last before bed.
Like this hint? Then you need to check out Memory Training for Students? For those of you that got the program, don’t you love it? Write and tell me how it’s going for you! If you missed my plug last week…Memory Training for Students teaches very powerful techniques to solve the problem of memorizing the information students need to know. It’s great for school, and it’s great for life. (Yes, I’ve used the stuff!) If you and your child have reviewed information over and over, only to have it disappear at test time or shortly thereafter, you need Memory Training. The program is an instant download of a set of five audio .mp3′s and a workbook. They are fun to listen to, and easy to follow. Go check it out now, and then forward this newsletter to others – your child’s teacher, your best friend, your family…
Visit our website at http://www.goaskmom.com.
I Facebooked back and forth a couple of weeks ago with a mom. She told me a story that is so textbook ADHD-Inattentive, that I asked her if I could share it with you. I had planned to put it all in the newsletter, but changed my mind and have given it an entire webpage. Here’s the beginning…
Tonight, I sit here feeling like I am failing as a parent of an ADHD child. My daughter is such a good kid, but her forgetfulness, impulsiveness and disorganization has become an all time high. She has just received her 3rd after school detention for the same thing-not turning in her homework. She is in middle school and they are teaching them about being more responsible to get them ready for high school next year.
They get a check every time it happens and when they reach 4 they get an hour after school. It is wiped clean every 9 weeks so the checks do not carry over. It is also per teacher as well. So now, if she receives another detention before the end of the year, she will get a Saturday detention AND lose going on their field trip to the water park.
I went through her backpack and binder tonight to find a STACK of papers that she didn’t need anymore. I haven’t done that in a while, thinking that she was getting better being organized. Boy, was I wrong! She has so much potential and is so smart. I don’t want her to lose out on any opportunities because of something as stupid as forgetting her homework…
Read the rest of this story here!
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Visit our website at http://www.goaskmom.com.
When you’re in the middle of a marathon homework session, encourage your child to continue focusing by giving frequent concentration breaks. Say, “You’ll need to focus really well for the next 10 minutes, then you’ll get a break.” (Why does this remind me of Lamaze class?!)
Highlight processing signs (plus, minus, divide, etc.) on your child’s math homework so he’ll remember to do the correct operation.
In your quest toward homework independence, your child might just need a jump start. When she begins a subject, do the first problem or two with her, or help write that first sentence, or have her read the first paragraph aloud. It’s like riding a bike – sometimes you just need a push-off.
If your son has a habit of scribbling down homework assignments onto a piece of paper and losing them, follow the example of the mom who placed a large container right where her son came into the house. As he comes in from school, she has him deposit everything on his body – bookbag, books, pens, pencils, sports equipment. She also makes him empty his pockets, so that the assignments can be located when it’s time to begin homework.
Make a study zone for homework – with a file tote which contains assorted supplies (looseleaf paper, pencils, pens, scissors, rulers, markers, etc), as recommended in Homework Without Tears, a great resource.
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Visit our website at http://www.goaskmom.com.
Welcome to this week’s Ounce of Ketchup! I’ll be blunt. I hope your week has been better than ours. Without going into the gory details, well…let’s just do Thursday night.
After we discovered that two of the boys had projects due Friday involving poster board, my husband volunteered to go buy extra. He came home with three science boards. Thankfully, we had just enough poster board in our supply closet. Somebody remind me to buy more before the next crisis occurs.
Ron had two projects due that he hadn’t started (she types with clenched teeth). One was a collage. My husband and I were up after midnight helping him find and print pictures. Ron was still doing the other project on the way to school Friday morning.
For once, thankfully, Joe had a very light night. Although he had a major test Friday, we had already studied because he thought the test was Thursday! So we reviewed a bit, and read a chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Then there was Mike, who rarely asks for help. He was stuck on the principles of electricity. Voltage and amperes and ohms. (Oh my!) After an hour of chapter review, he felt confident enough to do his homework, and I felt confident enough to plug in an appliance.
Finally there was Ash. (The one without ADHD!) He had to reach his Accelerated Reader goal by Friday, which meant had to completely read one book and type a book report on another. PLUS he had not completed a project correctly and the teacher sent it home for him to redo. He got the reading and the report done, but spent three hours in class to next day finishing the project. His teacher has more patience with him than I do – I think I would have given him a zero!
And that was just one night…Weeks like this that made me start “Who Put the Ketchup in the Medicine Cabinet?” Weeks like this make me wonder what business I have giving hints about how to keep kids focused, organized, encouraged, and successful! Nonetheless, below you will find your weekly dose.
Until next week, remember: You’re not the only one!
PS If you’re looking for ways to Wake Up from the Homework Nightmare – read how we figured it out at http://www.goaskmom.com/homework.
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Visit our website at http://www.goaskmom.com.
It’s funny how kids grow up and thank you…without saying so. Ron asked me yesterday for a copy of something we used with the boys when they were in middle and high school. He rolled his eyes at it back then. But now he’s got a class where he has to memorize a whole lot of stuff. He wanted me to send him the .mp3′s of Memory Training for Students. He remembered how well it worked when he had to learn a lot of material way back when.
It’s been so long since I’ve mentioned Memory Training for Students that most of you readers probably aren’t familiar with it. Memory Training for Students teaches very powerful techniques to solve the problem of memorizing the information students need to know. It’s great for school, and it’s great for life. (Yes, I’ve used the stuff!) If you and your child have reviewed information over and over, only to have it disappear at test time or shortly thereafter, you need Memory Training. The program is an instant download of a set of five audio .mp3′s and a workbook. They are fun to listen to, and easy to follow. Go check it out now, and then forward this newsletter to others – your child’s teacher, your best friend, your family… (Unbelievably, after 24 years I’m guilty as charged…)
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Visit our website at http://www.goaskmom.com.