Here are some tips on Increasing Your ADHD Students Time On Task:

Promote and reward the student's time on task, never time off task. Give a minute timer to keep on his desk. Ask the child how long he thinks it would take to perform a certain task. Let him set his own time and race against the timer.

One of the hallmarks of attentional problems is the difficulty with sustaining attention on tasks over time. Students with attentional problems may need different levels of external/internal stimulation to enhance task focus.

Students with attentional problems do better in classrooms with four walls than in an "open pod" arrangement. Open pods allow too many visual and auditory distracters throughout the day.

Along with breaking up the need for sustaining attention for a long period, your student would do better when allowed frequent breaks to move around inside and outside the classroom. This may vary from a daily outside walk, doing errands around the building, to classroom stretching exercises.

Your student tends to lose focus and his activity? level may increase during the day. Therefore, schedule the most demanding attentional tasks in the morning.

Your student may get overwhelmed with large assignments. His attention may wander after guided practice on similar tasks. Adjust the assignment down to smaller intervals. Give the assignment one sheet at a time. Assign every third problem, rather than every one, for completion to reflect mastery level. Cut apart single worksheets into strips. Tailor guided practice to occur during those time periods. Schedule breaks after this optimum attention time period and then return to the assignment.

Seat work is often extremely difficult. This can become compounded when the teacher is instructing another small group. Check on your student as much as possible or have him check?in with the teacher. Consider using a point system.

Since a characteristic of students with an attentional problem is the seeking of highly stimulating materials, computer?assisted instruction and drill can be highly successful and may also enhance keyboarding skills as well as fine-motor coordination.

Hopefully these will help the ADHD students in your classroom to be more successful. You can learn more about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder at the ADHD Information Library at http://www.ADD101.com.

Over the couse of these newsletters we will be presenting information on the relative effectiveness of the three most effective treatment options: Stimulants, EEG Biofeedback training, and ATTEND homeopathic nutriceutical medicine.

Below is a chart showing the effectiveness of EEG Biofeedback, or Neurofeedback training. This information is from a study by Rossiter and La Vaque which used the same protocols that we used in our clinical studies with ATTEND. They used the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA) as the measuring instrument to determine change in performance after using either medications of EEG Biofeedback training for 30 days. The TOVA is a computerized Continuous Performance Test (CPT) that has no placebo effective, and has no bias (such as you might see with parent rating scales).

A Comparison of EEG Biofeedback and Psychostimulants in Treating Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders. Thomas P. Rossiter, and Theodore J. La Vaque. Journal of Neurotherapy, 1, Summer 1995

With 30 days of EEG Biofeedback training the group improved in every category measured by the TOVA. They improved a great deal in their focused attention to a task (1.6 standard deviations); their self-control improved nearly one standard deviation (0.9 SD); their reaction time improved a bit (0.5 SD, which is still a statistically significant improvement on the TOVA); and their Consistency score, or Variability score, improved by the same 1/2 standard deviation.

These were good improvements. Perhaps not as big over all as the group that used stimulant medications, but still a significant improvement.

We like EEG Biofeedback training as an intervention, and we provided it in out clinic for seven years or so. The only downside that we'd warn parents about are:

(1) make sure that the person actually doing the treatment is well trained, as often the doctor or psychologist will turn the actual treatment over to a technician who barely knows what they are doing; and

(2) the treatments can come with a tall price tag. Shop around for a reasonably priced provider.

To learn more about your treatment options for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder visit the ADHD Information Library at http://www.ADD101.com.

Our most visited web site is our original ADHD Information Library found at NewIdeas.net. This site was originally developed in 1996 by Dr. Douglas Cowan, and has expanded each year since then, so that now it contains over 100 pages of free information for parents and teachers.

NewIdeas.Net has become so popular with parents that over 250,000 parents visit the site each year to read through the information.