Paste your esA rationale on the use of a practical resource to support the teaching of mathematics to children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
This essay will critically evaluate the use of a particular, practical resource in aiding the learning of maths for children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The essay will aim to address different issues that children with ADHD experience in school in regards to learning and how some of these barriers can be addressed through interventions and teaching in the classroom.
ADHD cannot be not directly associated with low intellect and identifying this and the mental well-being of children is fundamental, to facilitate a thorough understanding of their lower attainments. The diagnosis of ADHD is now included as part of the new Special Needs and Disabilities (SEND) code of practice and as stated in the Initial teacher training report (Munday 2016), ADHD is a learning need and needs to be addressed by teachers just like dyslexia, dyspraxia, speech and language and so forth. It is recognised as a learning difficulty and not just a behavioural issue, as there could be deeper underlying issues, such as mental health, which could be bringing to surface behavioural and concentration difficulties.
‘Children with ADHD have an additional learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and sensory processing difficulties. As well as the core characteristics of hyperactivity, impulsivity, inattention, poor memory, children with ADHD often have low emotional resilience. They are easily frustrated and predisposed to anxiety and depression, which further undermines their cognitive functioning and attainment’ (SecEd, 2014)
Practical learning strategies as appose to standard classroom based practice, where pen and paper is the norm, can be used to support the learning of children with ADHD. It is crucial that each child is seen as an individual as comparing one with another cannot be defined as effective preparation for teaching. Differentiation of learning styles and specific needs ought to happen so that the individual child, regardless of their needs, especially children with a Special educational need or disability (SEND), can access learning at their own pace. This is where practical resources can be used to aid learning for specific learners that may have a kinesthetic learning style or a lack of attention span with traditional teaching methods.
As Wood (1998) quoted ‘the work of Piaget and Bruner gained a wider readership, emphasis in the teaching of mathematics has been laid on the importance of relevant practical activity and the need for attention not only to teaching procedures but fostering conceptual understanding’.
Personal school based experience suggests that being able to understand the holistic child will aid in the preparation of learning materials to match individual needs of learners. It needs to be considered that even though some children may excel in one area of education, there may be another area that they struggle with. This is when practitioners in education should consider how and what they teach to that individual. Possible curriculum modifications need to be made so that they are best suited to individual children’s needs. Experience of working in a smaller class size has shown that learning can be individualized so that positive results can be gained for all, even if it means that pupils move small milestones. This is achievement for an individual.
Dockrell and McShane (1992, P.156) ‘Explored and stated that the ‘Warnock Report’ had made suggestions that emphasis was placed on curricular requirements where educational provision was designed to suit an individual child’s needs rather than the whole school. The Warnock report further went to suggest that that curriculum designs should focus on what the child’s requirements were rather than what their limitations were’
This meant that educators would need to have the understanding of the child’s cognitive abilities to be able to address the child’s individual problems. Once these were established they would be able to design individualized interventions for children to access an appropriate curriculum.
Experience of working with Children with ADHD and Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) issues has highlighted the fact that even though they may be spatial thinkers, they find the conventional mainstream school methods of teaching mathematics difficult to cope with. As these methods include print based assessments techniques, children with ADHD lose interest and inevitably attention which then means, for educators, that they are not accessing learning and the children end up in lower ability groups where they are believed to be more suitably matched.
(Clausen-May 2005a, p.84) suggested that there was evidence to show that these lower ability groupings for children with behavioral issues did not directly mean that there was a lack of understanding, it just meant that they had a different learning style. (Clausen-May 2005a, p.3) also suggested that because these learners may be more kinesthetic learners it might be difficult for them to show what they understood in formal written tests.
The use of practical activities and resources in teaching means that more often learners with ADHD are able to attend to and make effective use of the strategies that the teacher deploys in class.
‘The Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’ (DfES 2003) provides direction for the children’s workforce in education, health and social care to work together in pooling resources and coordinating services to support all children. In addition, children and young people are being placed at the centre of the decision making process’ (DfES 2003; DfEE 2004a; DfEE 2004b as citied in Hughes, 2009:109)
Mainstream schools may not be able to cope with the demands of the challenges that are posed to them by children with ADHD. Even though some children maybe medicated, they can still display problems such as behavioural issues, which mainstream schools find difficult to manage due to staffing levels.
Cooper, Smith and Upton (1994) state that mainstream schools do not have the capacity to deal with children with ADHD because they are not able to easily identify the complex, special needs of those with ADHD as mainstream schools are unaccustomed to such complexities of children. (Cooper, Smith and Upton, 1994 cited in Hughes, 2009: 109)
Thus special provisions are needed, if children with such complexities are to succeed. The reason behind this is because specialist schools are usually of a smaller size and employ specialist, skilled, staff that understand the complexities associated with ADHD and are able to use their knowledge and experience in managing the needs and learning difficulties that children with ADHD possess.
The resource that has been designed as part of this module is based on the needs of a child who learns in a visual and or kinesthetic style. Kinesthetic learners have various strengths and some of these are apparent in children with ADHD.
‘These include: they do not like to sit still for long; they love to be moving; going and doing; they tend to fidget and touch things; learn best if they are directly involved in whatever is being done’ (Everyday with ADHD, 2015: 1)
The resource is called ‘Maths is easy with cups’.
It is has been designed to suit teaching maths to children in lower key stage two and upwards, depending on the need of the child and their learning difficulty and has been successfully trialed in a year three class. The reason it is more suited to this age group is because a younger child would find the concept of applying maths to a real life situation difficult, especially when they are substituting numbers with cups. This resource is something that can be successfully used both in and out of the classroom.
The resource consists of practical elements (cups), which the child can physically hold, and use to work out mathematical questions. The resource works in co-operation with teaching with the child mirroring what the teacher is doing, to aid his or her own learning. This in turn puts learning in the hands of the learner rather than the teacher.
It consists of a teacher table and a pupil table, whereby the teacher acts out a mathematical question and reads it out like a story. This way the pupil can see the math behind the question and then they can try to replicate what was being shown to them to check their understanding. Sometimes errors are made when trying to replicate what was taught but with prompting this can be eradicated and learning can excel. It helps by prompting but also praising what was done well.
Dockerall and McShane (1992 p.196) explained that ‘errors are an inevitable part of learning. Teachers will want to keep errors to a minimum to prevent negative effects of failure’.
(Ault et all 1989, in Dockerall and McShane, 1992) said that ‘prompting is a more effective means of reducing errors than trial and error, providing a high level of prompting and then gradually reducing this’.
As mentioned earlier, kinesthetic leaners love to touch and feel and be involved in whatever is being done, therefore teaching with practical items helps aid their learning and keeps them attentive.
Following is an example of a question that has been used in developing and executing the resource. This shows how the children can access learning in a kinesthetic or an auditory or visual way instead of traditionally only auditory or visual, where the teacher displays teaching on a white board and discusses it.
Question – What is ¾ of 8?
Traditionally children would need to be able to establish what one-quarter of 8 was and then work out a half of 8 followed by adding ¼ to the ½ to establish what ¾ of 8 was.
In the ‘Maths is easy with cups’ resource, this question would be taught as follows:
A child would be given eight cups, representing the number 8. The teacher would place eight cups on their table (teacher resource table) and then write ‘what is ¾ of 8?’ on a white board. Next the teacher would say ‘let us look at what the fraction requires us to do’
The teacher would then explain that we would use the bottom of the fraction (denominator) to establish how many parts there are and the top part of the fraction (numerator) to establish how many parts we require from the number 8.
To make it simpler the cups would be placed as follows:
The teacher would explain that every time we saw four cups (as per the denominator) we would replace with three cups (as per the numerator)
Thus leaving the following on our table:
The pupil would then be asked to count individually how many cups were left in total on the table. They would successfully use their counting skills and establish that there were six cups. Thus giving them the answer six to the question ‘what is ¾ of 8?
This method of teaching gives the child a visual and kinaesthetic way of learning fractions, which would usually be a hard concept to grasp by many students, especially ones where a learning need means that they cannot attend for too long.
The practical element allows them to stay on task and sit still as they need to focus on how the teacher is explaining the task to them, as they will need to replicate this to show that they understand the concept.
Westwood (1993) argues that teaching needs to be a balanced approach, where there is a considerable focus on explicit teaching accompanied by ‘hand-on’ experience. (Westwood, 1993 cited in Stakes and Hornby 2000 Pg. 100)
The teaching of maths using this delivery concept allows children to gain a good level of conceptual understanding through the use of real objects and embellished actions. This in turn can help develop their fluency in the subject in terms of reasoning within maths and helping children become real problem solvers, which will enhance their mathematical skills to make them better mathematicians.
Experience of working within a SEMH provision has made clear that children with ADHD are more focussed and on task as they want to prove to others that they can accomplish something and prove to themselves that they know how to do something correctly. The use of the cups and tables to explain the concept means that the children have something real to concentrate on as appose to looking at a traditional white board or a smart board, which children with ADHD may not be able to do for a long span of time due to their difficulty.
Clausen-May (2005, Pg.3) explains that ‘kinaesthetic learning calls for a lot more than a pile of cubes or a pair of scissors. It involves using your whole being, engaging all your senses to feel or imagine what is happening. Visual, aural and kinaesthetic learning is intertwined’
This is how the resource successfully portrays learning. It allows pupils to use a range of their senses. They would look at their cups to establish what the questions expected them to be able to visualise and they would use their listening skills when the teacher explained by example. They would make use of touch when they were using the cups to break down the question in terms of using concrete objects. This whole concept would immerse them in their learning and help them gain confidence in maths to a different level.
The resource is not only limited to fractions questions but it can also teach the more basic four operations of maths including addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Again as the concept of fractions was explained there are elements within each of these operations that would make use of the cups and help develop pupil’s understanding. All the teaching is very practical and helps keeps the learner engaged.
The whole idea behind creating this resource was to ensure that children with ADHD were included in everyday teaching and the idea that a specific programme had to be created for them due to their learning difficulties was disregarded. It is common practice for special needs school, if not mainstream too, to ensure that their teaching is inclusive but sometimes this is impossible due to the varying needs of children.
Research by Gonzalez-Gil et al (2013) stated ‘The focus of inclusive education, as emphasized by White (2008), is the transformation of educational systems and cultures, as well as the educational practices and the organization of schools in order to meet the diverse educational needs of students, so learning and full participation of each child can be achieved. The more the inclusive the schools, the more the students will be in them and not out of them’. (White 2008, cited in Gonzalez-Gil et al 2013)
However inclusion is not always possible, as some learning complexities require specialist one to one interventions. Even though the resource that has been designed has taken into account specific learning needs and tries to embrace inclusion it may not work in all settings and situations. The theories behind pedagogy mean that teachers have to adapt their teaching techniques and strategies and deliver what they think fits best. Lewis and Norwich (2005) define this as ‘Teachers refine their teaching repertoires and routines through process of reflection that can be understood by Donald Schon’s (1983) model of the ‘reflective practitioner’.
Pupils with a learning difficulty need the same, if not more attention than that of a pupil without any learning need. Pupils to be excused from the right to an inclusive education should not use individual learning difficulties as excuses, especially by teaching professionals.
Practitioners can design and re-design various resources but they must ensure that the need of the child is being met. They must not focus entirely on the resource itself as much but the way in which the individual will learn using it. They should take into account how it will benefit them and what obstacles may they come across.
In conclusion, diversity in learning should be celebrated. It is the duty of the practitioner to impart knowledge to learners of all abilities and ranges as well as those with specific learning needs. The educational practitioner should be able to look beyond surface level barriers’ such as behaviour. A practitioner who is able to look beyond these difficulties and address the actual learning need, which could be very specific, is one that will succeed in imparting their knowledge to others and helping them achieve success in their learning journeys. Every child, even those with a learning need, should have the ability to succeed.
“Inclusion” does not simply mean the placement of students with disabilities in general education classes. This process must incorporate fundamental change in the way a school community supports and addresses the individual needs of each child. As such, effective models of inclusive education not only benefit students with disabilities, but also create an environment in which every student, including those who do not have disabilities, has the opportunity to flourish. (Gerondale, 2015)
say in here…