Kids with ADHD aren’t the only ones who have trouble learning. We’ve all had that experience at one time or another.
Like a lot of the ideas on this blog, today’s suggestion isn’t just for kids with ADHD; it’s for anyone to use whenever they are having trouble understanding something.
The idea is simple: use something you know and understand in order to help you grasp the new idea.
For instance, learning things like division, percentages, and decimals might be easier for a kid who’s a sports fan. Just pull out the latest stats and show them how batting averages are determined.
Or take them shopping, if that’s what they prefer. Show them how to figure out how much 20% off the price of those jeans will be. Honestly – it’s how I learned percentages – at the mall.
If it’s English that’s the problem – reading books and understanding the underlying story, history – understanding the dynamics behind the scenes – look to the movies. I would have never gotten through Shakespeare in college without movies to help me understand. There are a lot of modern movies that are based on classic novels, although you might never guess it.
10 Things I Hate About You – with Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger – is based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. West Side Story is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and some people even say that The Lion King is based on Hamlet!
And of course, you can find a wealth of movies that depict many important moments in history.
Movies are also beneficial in that they combine visual and kinesthetic means of learning in addition to auditory ones.
Current events can also help to make ideas clearer. Our current economy, for instance, might allow kids learning about the Great Depression to grasp it’s meaning more clearly.
The bottom line is that you may have to do more outside of school to help your ADD student understand his or her lessons, but if you can bring the ideas into their world, you have a better chance at understanding and retention.
Sometimes just replacing the characters in the book with familiar people can help with understanding. You’re bringing it down from what seems like theory into real life.
