kathryn
Cathlete
I have a student with ADD in my beginning French class, and he's driving me a bit up the wall! Are any of you familiar enough with ADD to tell me how much of this is ADD-related, and how much (if any) is just him being annoying? Your help would be appreciated.
And if you have any suggestions on how I can help him without taking away from the rest of the students (I've already put a kabbosh on his asking TOO MANY questions--to which the answers should be apparent to others, so I don't want to get the others into the habit of not paying attention and then getting the answer without doing the mental work they need to--in class, but to write some of them down and talk to me about them after class, so as not to disturb the flow of the class so much.
Some of the things he does:
I have students repeat a word about 4 times, in different ways (full class, 1/2 class), then a minute or two later (usually when we're onto something else), he asks how it's pronounced (I think that's the ADD at work!).
He seems to be very focused on details and worries excessively about them. For example, he's asked me several times how much I take off for missed accent marks on a test (exact points or fractions, etc.), because he isn't good at spelling. It's almost like he's setting himself up to make the spelling mistakes, in a way. Or at least that's how I would interpret it from a non-ADD student. In the same vein, he handed in an assignement, then anxiously asked me how he did on it (during the same class period in which he handed it in, so I hadn't even had a chance to look at it!!)
He has come into my office asking how to do a lab exercise, I explain it to him, he has a look on his face the entire time like he understands nothing of what I'm saying (no feedback there), but I find when I give him an example of what to do, that he actually does know how to do it and gives me the right answer. (Maybe he doesn't have confidence to know that he knows?) Then he comes in two days later, asking about the same exercise x( . It's almost like we never had the first conversation!
He says that he has the most problems with understanding spoken language (even in English!) because he is a visual learner, at which point I suggested he might want to take Latin, which is based on reading and writing, but he's determined to take French.
Help!
And if you have any suggestions on how I can help him without taking away from the rest of the students (I've already put a kabbosh on his asking TOO MANY questions--to which the answers should be apparent to others, so I don't want to get the others into the habit of not paying attention and then getting the answer without doing the mental work they need to--in class, but to write some of them down and talk to me about them after class, so as not to disturb the flow of the class so much.
Some of the things he does:
I have students repeat a word about 4 times, in different ways (full class, 1/2 class), then a minute or two later (usually when we're onto something else), he asks how it's pronounced (I think that's the ADD at work!).
He seems to be very focused on details and worries excessively about them. For example, he's asked me several times how much I take off for missed accent marks on a test (exact points or fractions, etc.), because he isn't good at spelling. It's almost like he's setting himself up to make the spelling mistakes, in a way. Or at least that's how I would interpret it from a non-ADD student. In the same vein, he handed in an assignement, then anxiously asked me how he did on it (during the same class period in which he handed it in, so I hadn't even had a chance to look at it!!)
He has come into my office asking how to do a lab exercise, I explain it to him, he has a look on his face the entire time like he understands nothing of what I'm saying (no feedback there), but I find when I give him an example of what to do, that he actually does know how to do it and gives me the right answer. (Maybe he doesn't have confidence to know that he knows?) Then he comes in two days later, asking about the same exercise x( . It's almost like we never had the first conversation!
He says that he has the most problems with understanding spoken language (even in English!) because he is a visual learner, at which point I suggested he might want to take Latin, which is based on reading and writing, but he's determined to take French.
Help!
