Homeschooling ADD Kids

Memorizing facts usually bores kids with Attention Deficit Disorder.  Actually, it even bores kids who have no attention challenges, but can be shear drudgery for ADD children.

So am I suggesting that you should do away with teaching your kids to memorize when you homeschool them?  Definitely not.  A certain amount of memorization is necessary, such as multiplication tables, key dates in history, vocabulary when learning a foreign language, etc.  In fact, if you’re interested in learning one of the best ways to help your kids memorize facts, see my previous post on using exercise and body movements to homeschool.  (The link will open in a new window, so just close it if you wish to return back to this post.)

However, there are only so many hours in a week and an endless amount of information that could be memorized.  So let me suggest a skill that is even more important that memorization: learning how to do research.

Think about it.  If your kids goes to college later on, how will they write their term papers?  If they need information for a business presentation (or for anything else for that matter) how will they find what they need?

You might at first think that they can just find the information they need on the Internet.  And they probably will.  But good research is not just a matter of typing a phrase in Google and clicking on links.  A lot of info out there on the web is repetitive.  Many sites are not real sources of information on topics, but rather commercial/sales sites.  But more importantly, it’s extremely fragmented.  There’s a bit of good info on one site, then a little more on another site, and a third one offers information that contradicts the first one.  Wikipedia is great, but it’s only a beginning point when researching a topic in depth.  And for some topics, it’s best to go to a library.

Children need to be taught, not only about the various sources of information and how to use them, but they also need to learn how to do the following:

• filter out the info that they don’t need and gather that which they do
• investigate contradictions and learn how to either find which is correct or how to present both sides of an issue
• take meaningful notes
• put the information in their own words (so that they are not just copying and pasting someone else’s words)

Since kids with ADD love to search and investigate, leverage that interest and teach them how to research.  They’re not going to be able to memorize everything they need to know in life and for their future careers, but learning how to be a good researcher will give them access to an endless supply of useful knowledge.

In: memory, research skills | | #