Helping ADHD Students With Reading and Writing

​Here are some practical ideas for dealing with ADHD students who need writing and reading help: To help children with ADHD who are poor readers improve their reading comprehension skills, try the following instructional practices:
•     Silent reading time. Establish a fixed time each day for silent reading (e.g., D.E.A.R.: Drop Everything and Read and Sustained Silent Reading [
•     Follow-along reading. Ask the child to read a story silently while listening to other students or the teacher read the story aloud to the entire class.
•     Partner reading activities. Pair the child with ADHD with another student partner who is a strong reader. The partners take turns reading orally and listening to each other.
•     Storyboards. Ask the child to make storyboards that illustrate the sequence of main events in a story.
•     Storytelling. Schedule storytelling sessions where the child can retell a story that he or she has read recently.
•     Playacting. Schedule playacting sessions where the child can role-play different characters in a favorite story.
•     Word bank. Keep a word bank or dictionary of new or “hard-to-read” sight-vocabulary words.
•     Board games for reading comprehension. Play board games that provide practice with target reading-comprehension skills or sight-vocabulary words.
•     Computer games for reading comprehension. Schedule computer time for the child to have drill-and-practice with sight vocabulary words.
•     Recorded books. These materials, available from many libraries, can stimulate interest in traditional reading and can be used to reinforce and complement reading lessons.
•     “Backup” materials for home use. Make available to students a second set of books and materials that they can use at home.
•     Summary materials. Allow and encourage students to use published book summaries, synopses, and digests of major reading assignments to review (not replace) reading assignments.

​See our ADHD books:

​http://www.writeforcollege.org/adhd-resources.html

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