Writing checklist ADHD

Since December I’ve been working after school with three boys who have ADHD and pretty big issues when it comes to writing. Two are fluent readers (let’s call them BZ and MJ for our purposes here) and show strong comprehension. The third, TJ, struggles. Standardized test scores put him at the low end of the normal range but the ADHD definitely gets in his way when it comes to staying with a text. I’ve made some progress, especially with TJ, getting him to actually write but feel like I could be doing more if I had a better plan. All three freeze when it comes time to write, and I’ll often spend most of a class period getting them started on an assignment while trying to make sure others’needs are also being met. I’ve been noodling around for a while on ADHD-help sites looking for some ideas but the sites tend to be a little facile on suggestions (let them dictate!) without much documentation for back-up. Recently I’ve been digging more into the literature and am learning that while ADHD and reading disabilities are the subject of a lot of scholarship, ADHD and writing disabilities have gotten far less attention (as the studies I do find point out immediately). In fact, the first longitudinal study looking at co-morbidity of ADHD and writing disabilities wasn’t finished until 2011 (Yoshimasu, et al., 2011). While I’ve found one teaching approach that looks sensible to me and will be leaning on that for our “writing tool” assignment (De La Paz, 2001), there’s definitely room for further study. It’s not surprising at a vo-tech school like mine to find a lot of ADHD. These kids are here because traditional schools didn’t work for them. Certainly when my students self-assess they talk about how they can’t bear to sit still. How much of that problem is the fault of schools vs. the result of a “disorder” is beyond the scope of this writing. Nevertheless nearly 40% of our kids have IEPs and judging from the documents I’ve reviewed and my conversations with special ed and guidance staff, ADHD is the prevalent diagnosis. Plenty of my students have deficiencies of one sort or another in their writing, but the three I’m working with after school are outliers in that they would fail my class for lack of completion if they weren’t spending extra time with me on their writing. (They’re all struggling in other classes as well.)

One frustration is that there is no resource to turn to for answers. Much as with the scholarship, it appears that in practice schools (or at least my school) are better equipped to help struggling readers than struggling writers. We don’t have a formal writing program for those kids beyond scaffolding via graphic organizers and allowing extra time. Such accommodations are helpful, but no panacea, especially in helping students to improve their writing. So I’ve taken a micro-approach, tailoring my coaching to the students’ seeming needs. MJ really needs to be drawn out and to start talking before he starts writing. TJ and BZ need to be refocused again and again on the prompt or they’ll lose their way. Once they are writing, TJ needs a push to edit while MJ needs more drawing out to expand. I don’t think what I’m doing is wrong necessarily but I’d like both a framework that was more structured than my simply reacting to what I see on paper and a way to help them beyond one-on-one work.

Where I’ve ended up for now is a planning and writing strategy devised by Susan De La Paz of Santa Clara University that uses the mnemonics PLAN and WRITE to help students organize and focus their work plus a series of cue cards to help writers develop their paragraphs and move from paragraph to paragraph. I’ll explain how I’ll use the strategy in more detail in the write-up but the highlight is that while much of what De La Paz suggests isn’t original, what she has produced appears easy to remember, easy to follow, and mixes the essentials of process and craft nicely. And while I went searching specifically for an ADHD writing assist, this strategy does strike me as an example of the universal design principle that a teaching aide necessary for some can be beneficial for all. I’m going to incorporate this first in my work with the after-school gang and if I see benefit then to the class.

This is De La Paz’s mnemonic. I’m working on tweaking it.

Pay attention to the prompt. List main ideas. Add supporting ideas. Number your ideas. Work from your plan to develop your thesis statement. Remember your goals. Include transition words. Try to use different kinds of sentences. Exciting, interesting $100,000 words. References De La Paz, S. (2001). Teaching writing to students with attention deficit disorders and specific language impairment, Journal of Educational Research, 95, 37-47. Yoshimasu, K., Barbaresi, W., Colligan, R., Killian, J., Voigt, R., Weaver, A., Katusic, S.(2011). Written language disorder among children with and without ADHD in a population-based birth cohort, Pediatrics, 128, 605-612.

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