Homeschooling ADD Kids

If you are one of our regular readers or subscribers, you’re familiar with how physical exercises combined with repetition of facts from history, science, geography, and other subjects can help a child with ADD to memorize far better than simply reading facts, listening to someone saying them over and over, or repeating it himself without physical movement.  If you haven’t read any of our past posts about it, a good place to start is this one: Using Exercises and Physical Movements to Teach Children with ADD.  You might also want to read this post: Mental Exercises vs. Physical Exercises: Which for the ADD Brain, then come back here and read the rest the information below.

Now that you know why exercise and physical movements are so effective in helping children with ADD to memorize facts, in this post I explain the two essential phases of memorization for homeschooled ADD kids.

THE "FACT EXPLANATION PHASE"

Before your child can work on memorizing facts, he obviously has to learn what the facts are.  (Excuse me for referring to your child as "he" when you might have a daughter…I do it since statistically there are more boys with ADD than girls, and it’s awkward to constantly read "he or she".)  There are many ways to explain facts, but one of the best ways is to take advantage of interest he showed in certain points. 

Let’s use the topic of earthquakes as an example:

If you are doing a unit study about earthquakes, then you are probably already reading about earthquakes, watching videos about earthquakes, making little clay models of earthquakes, and so forth.  (By the way, if you don’t already know , we have free unit studies here every Monday which you can use.) 

While you did the unit study, you probably noticed that your child was particularly interested in certain things about earthquakes and yet not so impressed with other aspects of them.  What you might have found amazing he might have just blinked at and vice-versa. Try to recall what facts he was especially paying attention to.  In fact, next time you do a unit study, take note of these on a pad.  Use these main points as a list of facts that you would like him to memorize.  You might have to include some things he wasn’t overly interested in if you know that they are very important to the topic, but try to mostly use points he liked.  After all, in everyday life we tend to remember things that caught our interest, not every single little detail about a subject.

After you have the list, write down the points on a whiteboard.  Careful with this though.  You don’t want to write long, boring paragraphs; just a sentences or a phrase with the main points, such as "The strength of earthquakes are measured by the Richter scale", and "Where an earthquake first starts is called its focus or hypercenter."  Pick about 10 to 15 points that you want him to memorize, depending on his age, level of attention and the difficulty of the subject matter.

Read each sentence right after you write it so he won’t have to wait for you to write all of the sentences before you start <<yawn>>.  After reading each one ask him what he remembered about it.  He might say that he remembers the video you watched talking about the Richter scale or pointing out the earthquake’s hypercenter when you made the clay model.  Or he might say he doesn’t remember those points at all (even if he did seem interested in them at the time).

Make sure you do not express displeasure or annoyance at the fact that your child might have forgotten many facts.  If he senses your irritation his emotions will take over and shut down his ability to learn.  Don’t be in a rush to drill the facts into his head. Slower learning has great advantages to the rushed instruction prevalent in schools.

Next, concentrate on the facts he could not recall and one by one review the activities that you both did together in the unit lesson that taught these facts.  For example, if he forgot the point about the Richter scale which was mentioned in the video, watch that part of the video again, asking him to stay "stop" when the talk about it.  Or if he forgot what the hypercenter of an earthquake is, take out the model you made together and patiently explain it again.

Even the points that he recalled he might have remembered only because you wrote them down.  In other words, had you simply said, "What is used to measure the strength of an earthquake?", he might not have been able to tell you.  But when you wrote down that it is the Richter scale, it may have jogged his memory or at least sounded familiar.  So, when you move on to the next phase, you’ll be reviewing all 10 to 15 facts.

THE EXERCISE/GAME PHASE

This phase is a big hit with ADD kids.  Steven looks forward to this part so much he talks about it all day and doesn’t want to stop doing it when our 30 minutes are up.  Although I described it in one of the previous posts I mentioned above, I’ll explain a little further here so that you can make the best use of this incredible technique.  I also include specific, physical, memorization games on this blog every third to fourth week on Monday’s so that you can see how to use them in relation to our ongoing unit studies or sometimes as just out-of-the-blue memorization games on chosen topics.

This game is a favorite of Steven’s.  It’s hallway hockey.  We have a nice long hallway in the center of our house and we keep it clear of breakable objects.  Steven stands at one end of the hallway with a plastic hockey stick while I stand at the other end with another.  I start with the puck (yes, also a plastic one, and fortunately its hollow). 

First I ask a question.  Using the earthquake example again, I say "What is used to measure the strength of an earthquake?" and hit the puck to him.  We’re not just hitting it back and forth, though.  I wack it pretty hard, trying to get it past his stick that he uses to block it.  My goal is to hit our front door.  He usually succeeds in blocking me, but sometimes I manage to get it by him and shout in triumph (adds excitement to the game).

Before he hits it back to me he has to give the correct answer.  If he forgot it, I tell him what it is, but he has to repeat it before hitting the puck back to me.  Steven is surprisingly good at hitting the puck in a way that it flies just 5 inches or so off the ground and gets by me, hitting the bottom of a bookcase at the end of the hall.  He cheers.

If he didn’t get the answer right the first time and I had to tell it to him, I do the same question again.  We do that maybe 5 or 6 times, using the same question.  Normally, that would be extremely boring, but Steven could care less if we do it 50 times.  I mean, he’s playing hockey, that’s pretty fun in itself! 

Then we move on to the next question and do the same thing again.  30 minutes goes by like nothing and he loves it.  But the best thing is this: when we are done and I ask him the questions…well you know the rest.

What about long-term memorization, though?  Well, here’s the thing:  most of us have probably forgotten 90% of the facts we learned in school or when being homeschooled. And that’s not too terrible.  After all, we learn facts not just so we can spit them out like a computer, but it exercises the brain and increases our capacity to remember things overall.  It also helps us to learn new concepts since learning is, for the most part, relating new things to those we already know.  And often there is more value in teaching your child to research than just to memorize facts. 

I will say, though, that using physical games and exercises like the one we just discussed greatly improves the amount of information that a child can remember.  I don’t have hard data on this, but try it out and you’ll see what I mean.

There is, however, a technique that you can use if you want to help your child remember certain key facts months or years later.  The key lies in choosing which of the facts is truly the most important to know.  For example, of the two facts about earthquakes that we discussed before (what they are measured by and the name of the point where the earthquake starts) the most important one for a child to know would probably be that earthquakes are measured by the Richter scale.  Why?  Because it’s talked about on the news and people discuss it, but they don’t frequently discuss an earthquake’s hypercenter.  Another important fact worth memorizing is that earthquakes are caused by shifts in the Earth’s plates.  However, memorizing the countries where the three largest earthquakes occurred would be of lesser importance.

After choosing the most relevant facts, make a list of them in a notebook or on your computer and periodically play a game of indoor hockey or some other physical exercise memorization game in which you throw in the most important facts from the previous month or two.  That way you are reminding your child of the most important aspects of the subjects that you are studying.

It’s important to remember that although the Exercise/Game Phase of the memorization instruction is highly effective, as is the Fact Explanation Phase, the two phases work hand-in-hand.  One depends upon the other.  Please use them together.

Leave a comment here to let me know how it’s going.  I’d love to hear your experiences!

Ready for a game?  Meet me here every third or forth Monday and I’ll have a blog post with a fun, physical game that will help your child to memorize.  The other Monday’s we have unit study projects, so drop by for those too!

In: exercise, games, memory | | #