ADD Student

Here are two of my favorite study techniques – good for any student to use, but especially useful for ADD Students! I like these because in addition to being highly effective, they are pretty easy to implement and fairly inexpensive.

My first suggestion is to utilize flash cards – the old standby that’s been around forever. It’s been around so long because it works! You know how it’s done – key word on one side, definition or explanation on the other. Make it short and to the point. Adding color or pictures is a great idea that can really reinforce learning quickly. (The brain will grasp a picture that represents a concept faster than it will written words. Also, many people with AD/HD are visual learners, so that makes the cards even more effective.)

It’s important for your child to make their own flash cards, because doing so adds another layer of learning to the process. Encourage them to take them everywhere with them. This is something I learned while in college – you can find spare seconds or minutes all day long and use them to study a few cards. This is a painless process that really pays off.

Also encourage your child to run through the cards out loud when they can. The act of speaking and then listening to their voice reinforces the learning further. Remember, the more senses you can involve in the learning process, the more likely you are to retain what you’ve learned.

And that brings me to my second suggestion – having your child record themselves reciting whatever they need to study or remember. Think about this: how many songs do you know the words to? Did you make an attempt to memorize them, or did it just happen because you heard them over and over on the radio? You can use this same concept to learn and retain valuable information.

This works especially well if you start at the beginning of the school year, so that you have an entire semester’s worth of recordings – very handy for final exams. Regardless of where you are in the school year, though, you can put this concept to work. Have your child make a tape or CD of whatever it is they need to remember.

You may need to repeat the information more than once in order to make a decent length recording. Aim for no more than 15-20 minutes worth. If you have more, make another “track” (like on a CD) and leave some empty air space in between.

Then play the tape over and over, whenever you get a chance. In the car, at home, wherever you can. Do it some times with the aim of really listening, learning, and retaining. But use it also – much more often – the way you would a music CD. Play it in the background, over and over, just the way you listen to the radio in the car. You will find that, over time, you will retain more than you think.

I hope that you give these ideas a try – they really can enhance learning and do it in a fairly easy, effortless way!