A Confusing Conundrum: Gifted Students with ADHD

1. A Confusing Conundrum: Gifted Students with ADHD Susan Baum, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus College of New Rochelle Director of Professional Development Bridges Academy www.internationalcenterfortalentdevelopment.com

2. ADHD

3. Robin Williams 1952-actor, comedian, ADHD Early on, Williams applied his inexhaustible hyperactivity to many films

4. Students with ADD/ADHD • Classic manifestations: • Creative thinkers • Difficulty sustaining attention especially in listening activities • Difficulty completing written work, • Physical restlessness or feelings of restlessness • Impulsivity • Difficulty following through on instructions from others (not due to oppositional behavior or failure of comprehension) • Need to move to learn

5. IT’S COMPLICATED

6. COMORBIDITY:THERE IS AN INTERACTION BETWEEN GIFTEDNESS AND ADHD • 1, OVEREXCITABILITIES • 2. ROLE OF DRUGS, STIMULATION, AND THE CURRICULUM • 3. HIGH ABILITIES IN SPATIAL AND KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCES

7. Sensitivities of the High-CreativeDabrowski’s “Overexcitabilities” • Psychomotor • Intellectual • Emotional • Sensual • Imaginational

8. Psychomotor A heightened physical energy that may be expressed as a love of movement, rapid speech, impulsiveness, and/or restlessness.

9. Sensual Heightened sensory awareness (e.g. touch, taste, smell).  May be expressed as desire for comfort or a sharp sense of aesthetics.

10. Vivid imagery, use of metaphor, visualizations, and inventiveness.  May also include vivid dreams, fear of the unknown, poetic creativity, or love of fantasy. Imaginational

11. Persistence in asking probing questions, love of knowledge, discovery, theoretical analysis and synthesis, independence of thought, and the love of solving the problem. Intellectual

12. The role of attention and curriculum

13. A simple model of how information is processed S E N S OR Y I NP U T Engagement Enthusiasm Enjoyment Short-term Memory A Expression the ability to focus on a task over time P assageway Attention UNDERSTANDING Long-term Memory A-V-K Novelty Intensity Personal Relevancy Application Critical & Creative thinking Generalization

14. How Many Squares Do You See?

15. The wrong question: “How can we help students sit STILL and focus?”

16. HOW LONG ARE YOUR STUDENTS SITTING? VERBAL FLUENCY ACTIVITY: ARE YOU READY? • CIRCLE TIME? • LISTENING? • DOING SEATWORK?

17. Research says that sitting and listening and paying attention is developmental. • The amount of minutes is related to age up to 15. • 10 minutes and attention starts to drift if information is boring monotonous • Digital kids listen faster • 2E students especially those with ADHD think better when moving

18. Essential needs • Novelty and appropriate challenge • Unlimited use of technology for productivity and learning • Active engagement through spatial, kinesthetic and emotional activity • Use of movement in the curriculum • Infusion of problem based inquiry learning as an outlet for curiosity and creativity • Skills to organize and control emotions

22. s

23. Unlimited use of technology • Word processing • Calculators • Focus tool: back channeling, accelerated lecture • Note-taking • Web quests • Voice thread • Animoto • Imovies • Digital pen (records and writes) • Xtranormal • Inspiration

24. Incorporate movement into activities

26. Let’s Use Drama • Wonderful World of Words

27. Provide opportunities for movement within curriculum Distance = rate x time Opposite Board

28. Movement to support learning • The walking lane • Travel pair share • Transition dancer-size

30. WHEEL OF CHOICE

32. Practical Manager vs. Creative: Who is right?

33. Let’s get organized: Down with disorder movement • Sales of home-organizing products, like accordion files and label makers and plastic tubs, keep going up and up, from $5.9 billion last year to a projected $7.6 • billion by 2009, as do the revenues of companies that make closet organizing systems, an industry that is pulling in $3 billion a year, according to Closets magazine.

34. This is why January is now Get Organized Month, thanks also to the efforts of the National Association of Professional Organizers, whose 4,000 clutter-busting members will be poisedwith clipboards and trash bags--ready to to minister to the 10,000 clutter victims

35. We need an organized space to think and work.

36. . Or do you embrace the anti anti-clutter movement?(NY Times, 2009) • This says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder • It’s a movement that confirms what you • have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

37. Writer’s haven Einstein’s oft-quoted remark, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?”

38. Creatives claim: • It takes time to organize • We need to have everything's in front of us. • Searching through the piles helps make connections • Organization is a form of procrastination • Creative thinkers are messy. Creative thinkers tend to have messy desks. In January 2006, a study of hundreds of CEO's indicated that the highest scorers in innovation and risk-taking scored lowest on organizational and neatness skills. Creative people organize their desks intuitively to correspond with the way their minds organize information, and studies suggest that people with messy desks have great career potential. • http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Williamson

39. Creative space

40. Teach time management and organization contextually

41. Teach stress management, conflict resolution and anger management skills.

42. Learned experts STRATEGIES FOR ORGANIZATION

43. Work space • Provide a quiet place for these students to do their homework. A desk in their room away from “noise and activity” is best.

44. Schedule for organization of homework, chores, and more… • Estimate time needed to allow for but limit intellectual excursions • Encourage talking out ideas before beginning assignment or project

45. Scaffolding • Outline/ folders with sub folders • Monthly calendar listing due dates. • Blank pages for sketching out concepts and post-it notes for jotting down ideas. • Pocket pages also help these students to organize extra information that they find on their own about a topic.

46. Scaffolding • Allow music while working. This strategy often helps them to keep their minds from wandering into realms more interesting especially if the assignment is not challenging enough. • This can be used for chores as well. Listening to a book on tape while cleaning their room, for instance.

47. Randoms and organization • Tend to misplace things • Skip or forget directions, • “Post- it” monthly calendar, Backwards planning and deadlines • Email assignments back and forth • Time management: Come home between 5:45-6:00 • Piles, stacks, and storage bins

48. Creative problem solvers Strategies for organization

49. Work space • Allow space to spread out and move about • Thinking may happene when lying on the floor while tossing a ball in the air. • Laptops were made for these students—as they are always on the move.

50. Schedule for organization of homework, chores, and more… • Provide ownership and choice for the when and order of task completion. • Ask when they plan to start their work and if they need you to remind them.  • Have few rules with which you adhere to consistently. • Provided few but detailed directions. Do not say clean your room, but rather hang up your clothes and put your games away.