Children with ADD are often singled out as behavior problems in the classroom. They are always on the move, bouncing from one thing to another, not completing tasks, unruly, disorganized, disruptive, uncooperative and easily frustrated.
On the other hand, children with ADD have areas of giftedness and brilliance and will succeed in learning when they are taught in a way that honors their internal wiring.
Children with ADD/ADHD & how they learn best
Children with ADD are brilliant visual learners. They learn more from images and visuals in a few seconds than their left-brained counterparts can learn in several minutes of listening to a lecture. They can grasp a whole picture in a glance and work their way to a solution quickly. Children with ADD are global thinkers and random processors. This means that following a prescribed step-by-step sequence runs counter to the way they think. They learn visually and instantly, so repetition and drill and memorization don’t help them. Once they are turned on to their amazing visual capacities, children with ADD can solve difficult problems in their heads, remember very large words – remembering how things look, not by what they heard about it in a lecture.
Children with ADD are:
- Intuitive
- Creative
- Problem solvers
- Observant
- Perceptive
- Sensitive
- Prone to high personal expectations
How we can help
Because children with ADD think in pictures and not in words, we have designed learning resources that empower them to learn through visuals and hands-on activities. We have designed learning resources that bypass the sequential, step-by-step teaching methods that are used in most traditional classrooms. One of the most important ways we can gift children with ADD is to help them develop a sense that they are gifted and capable and competent. They need to understand how powerful their visual gift is and be taught to use their gifts. Rather than working to make them conform to our traditional teaching method, we change our method to work according to their unique design.
