ADHD Executive Function And School Success

I recently happened upon the following book: 100 Questions and Answers About Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Women and Girls, by Patricia O. Quinn, MD, who is the Director of the National Center for Girls and Women with AD/HD.

From this book I have learned that many girls with ADHD exhibit symptoms somewhat different from the classic patterns that I was familiar with until last week.  Also of note is the fact that girls with ADHD tend to have more problems with inattention than hyperactivity, that ADHD in girls is still very misunderstood, and that many girls go undiagnosed for years, because often a high IQ, extraordinary coping skills, and a supportive environment can mitigate its impact, for a while.  But the fact is that without the proper support and management strategies a student with ADHD will have difficulty living to his or her own potential.
 Many of our teenage girls with ADHD can become anxious, extremely moody, or depressed, suffer from organization problems, impulsive behavior, difficulty processing information or following directions, being spacey, and potential hypertalkative or hyperreactive behavior.  It is not uncommon for students with unadressed ADHD to suffer from migraines or stomachaches caused by their academic distress, especially in girls.  Seeing how difficult it is for them to complete tasks that others complete with seemly little effort makes them feel overwhelmed and super stressed.  The frustrating thing for students with ADHD is that, when left undiagnosed, it becomes increasingly difficult to cope with, particularly in college.

Therefore, what can we do as teachers to help?

• First and foremost, focus on strengths and not on weaknesses.  This does not mean that shortcomings should not be addressed, but the focus should be on accomplishments.
• We already know that students with diagnosed ADHD can get extended time on tests and exams.  It is also a good idea to divide long-term projects into segments with separate due dates and grades.
• Use paired learning.
• Help students develop mnemonics, such as acronyms or acrostics, if they need to memorize chunks of information.
• Use visual posting as well as oral instructions.
• Use color and graphic organizers to help students organize their thoughts.
• Shorten assignments, when appropriate.
• Increase the amount of supervision and monitoring for these students, if they are struggling.
• Use technology, when appropriate.

Hopefully, teachers and parents of today realize that ADHD is often a very complex condition.  It is much more than just a simple case of hyperactivity.  When deficits in executive function and related learning problems are also present, students can try their very best and still not succeed in school! (from the website of ADD Resource Center.)

Rethinking Grammar

I have been learning that I should not teach two similar concepts at the same time.
Unfortunately, grammar books in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language present similar concepts in contrast.  This is standard methodology.

Now I know why students have such a difficult time mastering such concepts as:

Tú/Usted
Ser/Estar
Por/Para
Pretérito/Imperfecto

Clearly, this methodology was developed a long time ago, before we knew much about learning and the brain.

We, Spanish teachers, should be rethinking how key grammar concepts are being taught and develop new methodologies based on research and results.

Failure and Success

People will participate in learning activities that have yielded success for them and avoid those that have produced failure.

Time Limits of Working Memory

An adolescent or adult normally can process an item in working memory intently for 10 to 20 minutes before mental fatigue starts setting in.

For focus to continue, there mus be a change in the way the individual is dealing with the item.

So, packaging lessons into 15 to 20 minute chunks is likely to result in maintaining greater student interest.

Shorter is better!

Working Memory

Working memory has a functional limit.  It may be as low as four items for adults, and it is an average of 7 for teenagers.

This piece of information has changed the way in which I present information.  Now I make sure I do not give any lists longer than 7 items at any one given time.

Less is more!!!

Extensive research on retention indicates that 70 to 90 percent of new learning is forgotten within 18 to 24 hours after the lesson.  Therefore, in order to test whether information actually has been transferred to long-term storage, do not test less than 24 hours after learning, and come as a surprise to the learner, with no warning or preparation time.

Explain to students that unannounced tests help them see what as well as how much they have retained and learned over a given period of time.

Emotions and Motivation

Emotions consistently affect attention and learning.

Motivation is essentially an emotional response.  It's no secret that learning occurs best when the learner is intrinsically motivated.  To stimulate intrinsic motivation and interest, teachers should:

• Make clear what the students should be able to do when the lesson objective is accomplished.
• Include provocative ideas and challenging activities.
• Involve the students in developing the criteria that will be used to asess their competency.
• Demonstrate how closely the content is connected to the real world.
• Give students choices in selecting activities and questions to pursue.
• Establish accountability
• Provide feedback

Teachers can make their classrooms better learning environments by avoiding threats (even subtle intimidation) and by establishing climates in which students are treated fairly and feel free to express their opinions during discussions.

I often use humor to enhance my class climate and promote retention.

Separating Fact and Fiction

This entry is a cut-and-paste from Sara Bernard's Edutopia blog post:

There are some powerful insights emerging from brain science that speak directly to how we teach in the classroom: learning experiences do help the brain grow, emotional safety does influence learning, and making lessons relevant can help information stick. The trick is separating the meat from the marketing.
So what's an educator to make of all these claims?

Standards of Proof

The use of neuroscience in education, relatively speaking, is young. Neuroimaging technologies have really only developed over the last 20 years, so virtually nothing is "proven" at this point. Neuroscientists can point to some aspects of how different parts of the brain function and connect with one another, but when it comes to education, no one can definitively outline more than a few broad concepts.
"My basic recommendation is that if a product claims to be proven by brain research, forget it," says neurologist and former classroom teacher Judy Willis. "Nothing from the lab can be proven to work in the classroom -- it can only correlate."

In other words, the conclusions here are murky at best. If a strategy or program produces results, use it. Just don't assume that its value is unequivocally proven by brain science.

Neuroscientists urge educators to trust themselves on this. If a claim seems off, it probably is, and if it confirms something that already seems to work, it's probably on the right track. "Usually, when scientists discover something true about the brain," notes Sylwester, "it doesn't surprise teachers."

Deep Sleep

Encoding information into long-term storage takes time and deep sleep. 
For years, I have been telling my students how important a good breakfast and a good night's sleep are to academic success.  Because I questioned if my words have been taken seriously, this year, we started tracking breakfast and sleep with my homeroom.  I am hoping that with the visual help of the posters, my homeroom will begin to change breakfast and sleep behaviors.

Sense and Meaning - Closure

The main criteria for long term storage of knowledge is: sense and meaning (relevance.)  Therefore, it is important to integrate curriculum and make connections.

Students ask themselves:

• Does this make sense?
• Does it have meaning?

Closure: the covert process whereby the learner's working memory summarizes for itself its perception of what has been learned.  It is during closure that a student often completes the rehearsal process and ataches sense and meaning to the new learning, thereby increasing the probability that it will be retained in long-term storage.

Closure is different from review: In review, the teachers does most of the work.  In closure, the student does most of the work by mentally rehearsing and summarizing those concepts and deciding whether they make sense and have meaning.

When to use closure: at various times.  It can start a lesson, it can occur during the lesson, or at the end of a lesson.

This year I have started practicing closure in my lessons.  I am still not systematic about it, and I am working towards improvement.  I need to make it a part of my teaching routine.

Memory and Emotions

"Responding emotionally to a situation, suspends complex cerebral processes, while enhancing our memory of it."  (Souza)

Motivation is an emotion > emotions play a big part in learning.


Working memory can handle only a few items at once, generally about 7 in High School.

Windows of Opportunity as a Child's Brain Matures

"If a perfect brain doesn't receive visual stimuli by the age of two, the child will be forever blind, and if it doesn't hear words by the age of 12, the person will most likely never speak a language."  (Souza)

This is why the window of opportunity to learn a foreign language well starts closing at about age 12.

"What is learned while a window of opportunity is opened will most likely be learned masterfully."  (Souza)

The Beginning

This school year I joined a learning cohort.  Our focus is learning and the brain.  I am reviewing a few things I knew, and learning a number of fascinating facts, many of which have direct implications in my teaching.  I will be writing about this periodically.

Here is the low-down on a few basic ideas:

If we need to work towards academic achievement, a good night's sleep and a good breakfast are essential for good brain function.  Overall good, wholesome nutrition is something we need.  Our modern diet is negatively affecting brain function, especially in the younger population.


It is important to take advantage of windows of opportunity, those critical periods where it is most likely that whatever is learned, can be learned masterfully.  For language it is before age 12.

The brain is very interested in changes that are occurring in our environment, and is constantly scanning for new things (which has its pros and its cons.)  It always has been, but in the past couple of decades, our environment has become increasingly stimulating.  Children have become accustomed to these information-rich and rapidly changing messages.  Therefore, they need much more novelty in the classroom than in decades past.  A few class activities I incorporate that are a direct result of this observation:

• Using humor in the classroom
• When things look particularly sleepy, I use movement.  A 3 minute video-dance in Spanish perks everyone up.  (Students have to stand and dance along.)
• Remember to develop with multi-sensory instruction.

Children and adults think they are "paying attention" to several things at once, but we know that they are not.  One of the consequences of constant "activity switching" is the difficulty to go into any one thing in depth.  (As already commented in my other blog's entry, Wired To Distraction.

Because of technology, students miss too many outdoor opportunities.  This deprives them of gross motor skills development, socialization skills, and physical activity.  At the same time, it does not allow them to develop a vital sense of connectedness to the environment they depend on.

How are schools changing to adapt to these new realities?  How should they be changing?  Feel free to comment :)

(Most of the previous points come from How The Brain Learns, by David A. Sousa.)