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

ADHD

Robin Williams   1952-actor, comedian, ADHD

Early on, Williams applied his inexhaustible hyperactivity to many films

Students with ADD/ADHDClassic 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

IT’S COMPLICATED

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

Sensitivities of the High-CreativeDabrowski’s “Overexcitabilities”

•Psychomotor

• Intellectual

•Emotional

• Sensual

• Imaginational

Psychomotor

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

Sensual

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

Imaginational

Vivid imagery, use of metaphor,

visualizations, and inventiveness.  May also include vivid dreams, fear of the unknown, poetic creativity, or love of fantasy.

Intellectual

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

The role of attention and curriculum •

A simple model of how information is processed

NoveltyIntensity

Personal Relevancy

AAt t e n t i o n

SENS

ORY I

NPUT

A-V-K

Short-termMemory

Expression

UNDERSTANDING

assageway

Application

Critical & Creative thinking

Generalization

Long-termMemory

Engagement

Enthusiasm

Enjoyment

P

How Many Squares Do You See?

“HOW CAN WE HELP STUDENTS SIT STILL AND FOCUS?”

The wrong question:

HOW LONG ARE YOUR STUDENTS SITTING?

VERBAL FLUENCY ACTIVITY: ARE YOU READY?

• CIRCLE TIME?• LISTENING? • DOING SEATWORK?

• 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

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

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s

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

Incorporate movement into activities

Let’s Use Drama

• Wonderful World of Words

Provide opportunities for movement within curriculum

Distance = rate x time

Opposite Board

Movement to support learning

• The walking lane• Travel pair share• Transition dancer-size

WHEEL OF CHOICE

Practical Manager vs. Creative: Who is right?

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.

• 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

We need an organized space to think and work.

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.

•

.

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

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

Creative space

Teach time management and organization contextually

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

Learned experts

STRATEGIES FOR ORGANIZATION

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Creative problem solvers

Strategies for organization

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.

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.

Scaffolding• Accept skipping around among their

assignments as long as they have a way get everything do.

• “Post-it daily to-do lists” can provide this structure. They can move them around.

• When they complete a task, crumpling

up the post-it and tossing it in a waste basket is rewarding in and of itself. They can even make a target game out of the process and keep points for accuracy. 

• Allowing these students to listen to music or have the television on can help them sustain focus as mentioned previously.

Scaffolding • Providing a different binder for each subject might make

organization easier for them. Piles not files work best.

• Traveling offices

• But don’t be surprised if everything is just thrown in together. The good news is that what they need is in one place.

Parents as Opportunity Makers

• Adventure experiences• Drama and performing arts• Lego and robotics competitions• Gaming and technology—creative

productive activities

Competitions

Celebrating the Achievements of ChildrenTM

http://www.amazing-kids.org/contests.html Check out the winning stories fromthe Amazing Kids! "Story Starter" Short Story writing contest! Read the winning essays from our "Appreciation" 2002 essay contest in Amazing Kids! eZine #5! Check out the winners of the  "My Amazing Future" 2002 contest! Winners of the first-ever AK POETRY CONTEST . See who won! (Follow the link at the bottom of the AK eZine #4 page.) Check out the Amazing Kids! Poster Design contest 2001 winners!  "My Amazing Future" 2001 essay contest winners  Check out the winners of our Animation Contest 2000!  These 6 lucky winners worked with Frank Gladstone, a professional animator from DreamWorks as their mentor! Check out the winners of our Amazing Babies essay contest!   Check out the winners of our 1st comics drawing contest!  The grand prize winner, 17 year old Laura Tisdel worked for a year with her mentor, professional cartoonist Guy Gilchrist.  Check out her Amazing Kids! Comic Adventures! Check out the winners of our 1st writing contest!

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Automatic dog washer

Automatic milk dispenser

Oddysey of the Mind

Summer Opportunities

• Camps

The pond problem:

The pond problem:

Edward Hallowell (2005)

I have learned first and foremost to look for interests, talents, strengths,

shades of strengths or the mere suggestion of a talent.

Knowing that a person builds a happy and successful life not on remediated

weaknesses but on developed strengths, I have learned to place those strengths at the top of what

mattersSusan M. Baum, Ph.D.