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00:00:04
I want to start by telling you a little story about how I got into this topic and it was at the height of um Co back in 2020 at the peak of Zoom teaching um I know some of you maybe still teach online majority of my teaching is in person now but back then um everything was on zoom and I decided to end one class about 20 minutes early we were finished there was nothing else for students to do and I was looking forward to a longer lunch break and everybody left except for one student and she said do you mind if I

00:00:40
stay in the zoom room and I said no but is everything okay and she said yeah yeah it's fine it's just I have a task that I really need to finish and I work better when there's somebody else working with me um is that okay can I stay and I said yeah of course you know I have a task to do as well um so let's do that we muted our microphones we left our cameras on and we worked for about 20 minutes and I was surprised to find that I was able to finish a task that I had been putting off for weeks and it

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didn't take me that long but I've been putting it off for weeks so we both managed to get something done and uh you know I padded myself on the back I said good job teacher you know you helped a student today and then I went and I ate my lunch but there was something that kept kept bugging me I thought to myself okay yeah of course I'm happy to help individual students when they ask for support but what about those who don't ask for support what about the rest of the class what am I doing in my

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classes to help students with ADHD so I did what I always do when I have a question like this and I went to Google I looked up language learning language teaching ADHD and unfortunately there were not that many resources out there um and so that's why I decided to to do my PhD research on this topic to find out more and um that's what I'm looking at now I'm looking at specifically language testing and to see if extended time testing accommodations are actually helpful for people with ADHD but my

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ultimate goal throughout all of this is to help my students and to help your students um and so I hope you keep that in mind while you listen to my presentation so here's what I'm going to talk about today we're going to start with a poll which you already know from Claire uh Claire's talk and Boo's talk if you around for that um there'll be three questions for you to answer then I'll talk a little bit about what Equity means what it means in this context we'll talk about what ADHD is to give

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you a better idea if you don't already know and then of course the all important tips for supporting Learners with ADHD and you'll notice that there is a lot of overlap with the other two talks that you heard today but it doesn't hurt to hear things more than once and then hopefully at the end we'll have some time for the Q&A um can we get the first poll question please all right so you should see it pop up on your screen which of the following best describes your understanding of attention deficit

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hyperactivity disorder or ADHD and as you might have noticed uh for some reason the panelists aren't able to see um the answers so my lovely assistant will is going to help me I'm here I'm ready to serve do we have enough to to give some answers yet or are we still waiting for people to I think we're good um so I have a strong understanding of ADHD and its impact on learning is 10% I have a basic understanding of ADHD is 38% I have a somewhat I am somewhat familiar with ADHD uh but like to learn

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more is 38% I'm not very familiar with ADHD so it's kind of uh 8020 mix kind of sorry 10 810 yeah yeah it's pretty similar to the to the first session as well because I wrote down the numbers for that all right thank you so can we have the second question now I think this audience is very well trained now with these polls have you received any formal training or professional development related to teaching students with Ada HD okay so extensive training is staying pretty low at 1% what one yeah 1%

00:04:56
wow okay some training is 24% mhm uh I've done my own research is 28% oh I'm sorry Vicki none at all is 48% that's a couple of percent higher than the first session yeah yeah no I mean it's it's of course it's disappointing on the one hand but on the other hand it's nice to know that I'm on the right path and and I'm doing something that will hopefully help people and the last question please how confident are you in your ability to effectively teach students

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with ADHD I feel like an assistant on a game show countdown or something we got to get you a sparkly vest I'll just let it simmer for a bit got it trying to keep up with the chat but it's impossible okay so very confident is 7% mhm 6% thereabouts somewhat confident 30% not very confident is 48% and not at all confident is 15% that's weird last time it was 30 48 15 so it's almost exactly the same yeah yeah interesting okay all right thank you so much well you're welcome so um

00:06:23
hopefully by the end of the session the confidence um your confidence will have gone up a little bit and those of you who answered none at all to the training or professional development will be able to change that a little bit and say you know what you have had some training all right so uh let's move on on the next slide and if you've seen one of my talks before you've probably seen the picture on the next slide before I'm going to show you a photo and I would like you to answer in the chat what you

00:06:51
see in the photo and who it is for okay here we go in the chat what do you see on the photo and who is it four pavement yes earthquake damage interesting pavement for disabled bikes or wheelchairs wheelchairs pedestrian pavement low pavement for Wheelchairs and bikes a dipped curb hey um a crack pavement for wheelchair it's a pavement for wheelchairs accessibility for moms with strollers aha now we're getting somewhere um adapted for prams you can skate ramps lowered pavement for us all very

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interesting wheelchairs accessible for everybody a lot of you were seeing the road damaged that's not that wasn't my intention with the photo but maybe a little bit adapted uh pavement for people with physical problems wheelchair access rollerblades skaters old people accessible pavement okay so we can see that um maybe it was just a mistake that's a very interesting comment so we can see that this was probably initially designed this way with wheelchair users in mind um but from the wide variety of

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things that you have written uh in the chat you can see that it's actually helpful for a large number of people people with heavy suitcases delivery people with trolleys parents with prams um maybe little kids on scooters or bikes um if you've broken your leg and you're on crutches um I don't know if if you are walking in high heels and you broke a heel or something honestly the the list is kind of endless um but this is something that I think has been coming up in in Claire's talk talk and

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in bu's talk as well this idea that uh if we help the most vulnerable of us then we inevitably help everybody as well okay it doesn't it doesn't hurt to help the most the ones among us who need the most help and so that's what I want to talk about when I talk about equity and I have a quote for you there's an ingrained societal suspicion that intentionally supporting one group hurts another that Equity is Zero Sum game so a lot of people believe that if we help one group of people that means

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another group is being hurt Zero Sum game is a game where one person wins and one person loses uh that is not the case with Equity Equity is not a finite resource when we help one group we can also help other groups and um as I said when we help the most vulnerable we all benefit and during this presentation that's what I want you to keep in mind I'm going to give you lots of tips and CLA and buo have given you lots of tips uh that are specifically for autistic Learners and dyslexic Learners

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and Learners with ADHD but I also want you to think about how could these tips help all of my students right um later on for example I'm going to talk about giving deadline extensions excuse me um as something that I think is helpful for people with ADHD who may struggle with organization but deadline extensions I've had students make use of deadline extensions for all sorts of things um they have a lot of stress at work because a lot of my students work they had a death in the family they are sick maybe someone

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they're caring for is sick um it really could be a a wide variety of reasons but by just offering a blanket deadline extension to everyone um hoping that the most vulnerable will use it and will benefit everybody benefits so let's talk a a little bit about what ADHD is but before we do um I'd like to remind you that there's no one unifying example of a person with ADHD if you've met one person with ADHD you've met one person with ADHD um everybody's very different okay

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everybody has different strategies different coping strategies everybody deals with their diagnosis differently some people choose to disclose it some people choose not to disclose it some people go to therapy take medication some people people don't some people choose not to even go out and get an official diagnosis even though they might be pretty sure that they have ADHD and everybody has good days and bad days there are things which might be very very challenging for somebody one day and the very next day they're doing

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that Tas with ease um so I want you to keep all of those things in mind and just like Claire um mentioned in her talk this is a disorder attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or at least the name says it's a disorder I don't support this belief I also support the neurodiversity perspective and I think it's just a different um way of thinking and living um and perhaps it's the society that's a little bit disordered but that's a talk for another day so some of you might know that there

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are different types of ADHD and in the medical literature they are called presentations not types there is the inattentive type in attentive presentation um there's the hyperactive and impulsive presentation and there's the combined presentation okay so let me tell you a little bit more about those the inattentive presentation is um uh people who have this presentation they might have difficulty sustaining attention in and organizing tasks and activities so basically staying focused paying

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attention can be difficult um they might not look like they're listening to you even when you're speaking to them directly um they might not follow through on instructions and schoolwork and um they might even get perhaps halfway through a task and then forget what they were doing and get distracted by something else they might make careless mistakes in their work not mistakes which show a lack of understanding but um mistakes that show perhaps they were working too quickly and they might be they might

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completely avoid or be reluctant to take on tasks which they know are going to take them a long uh a long time or um take on tasks which they think are going to take on a long time but might actually be finished in five minutes uh the next type is hyperactive or impulsive presentation and this is what you might think of when you think of ADHD The Stereotype of the naughty school boy um who can't sit still leaning back in his chair in the classroom disruptive um this is a stereotype that I hope will eventually

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just go away because it can be quite harmful and it can prevent a lot of people for get from getting the help that they need but it's a stereotype for a reason uh so the person who has this type of ADHD might leave their seat when they're not really supposed to and as adults and I'll talk a little bit about adulthood ADHD uh in a minute but as adults a lot of people have sort of trained themselves to stay seated but that energy that uh hyperactivity doesn't necessarily go away um it's more in your

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head and it's a an inner tension or a restlessness your thoughts are unable to settle your thoughts are running running running and it's very difficult to um to stay calm and cool um a person with this type of ADHD might talk excessively blurt out answers before You' even finish asking the question they might find it difficult to wait their turn uh when they're talking in a group and they might interrupt others as well um but of course I don't just want to focus on the things that people with

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ADHD struggle with let's have a look at some of the strengths that they have as well so unfortunately the strengths in ADHD are hugely under research there really isn't that much out there yet but it looks promising there's been a lot of studies done in the past two or three years and so I hope that those keep coming um but the one study that I'm quoting here um shippers and team they found that hyperfocus sensitivity and flexibility were some of strengths that they found in groups of people with ADHD

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um hyperfocus for those of you who don't know is a period of intense focus and it can last a really long time and it can be so intense that people who are in a period of hyperfocus um forget to eat forget to drink off going to the bathroom until the last possible minute they are hyperfocused as the word sounds um and perhaps one of the things that we can do as teachers is to sort of type into that tap into that hyperfocus and find what it is that students are interested in and play to their

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strengths another thing um another uh thing that was considered a strength for students with ADHD is sensitivity and in this case it's sens sensitivity to people's feelings and emotions so a person with ADHD might be more aware of very subtle changes in let's say their speaking partner's face or demeanor um and they might more quickly pick up on let's say a shift in Emotion um a person being in a bad mood perhaps than neurotypical people and the last one that was found in the study is

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flexibility and this is uh not physical flexibility necessarily but um sort of social flexibility psychological flexibility being able to change plans at the last minute spontaneity flexible ways of thinking um adaptation those sorts of things so those are the strengths and now to give you some facts and figures before I move on to the tips um you will see lots of different numbers when it comes to how many people have ADHD and it's difficult to pin down uh the study that I'm using which is a

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little over 10 years old um says that ADHD affects 5 to 7% of children and it's highly inheritable what does that mean that means that 70% of um the ADHD that is out there in the world can be explained by a person's parents so that means one of their parents has it basically uh there are some other causes um I think like childhood trauma is being explored as a as a potential cause but mostly it's it's genetic highly inheritable so uh if it's if one person has it in a family there's a high chance

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that other people have it also and a more recent study said that that number is as high as 99.4% in the US this doesn't necessarily mean that there are more children with ADHD in the US I just feel like in the US it's been destigmatized it's become a lot more normalized and people no longer feel ashamed speaking about it um talking to parents about it talking to doctors about it and getting the support for their their children that they need boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed as

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girls again this doesn't necessarily mean that boys have it more than girls um but if you think back to the two different presentations and imagine you have a a quiet in attentive girl who likes to stare out the window and a not so quiet um hyperactive boy who can be disruptive in the classroom which student do you think is going to get the teachers attention and which student do you think the teacher is going to want to fix for lack of a better word um it's probably going to be the student that is

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a little bit more disruptive who will you know get a note home to the parents and say hey I think maybe we need to talk about your son but nobody's going to notice the girl who forgets her homework um a couple of times um and kind of just coasts through basically unfortunately because there's this pervasive stereotype also uh there are some groups that are are typically underdiagnosed um again from this us study in 2021 showed that Asian Hispanic and black children are less likely to be

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diagnosed the study didn't necessarily say why but again it could be issues of stigma um yeah it's it's very difficult to say because there are high levels of stigma all around the world surrounding mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD like um autism dyslexia and so on and so forth what does it look like for adults um yes adults can have ADHD there is a a mistake in belief that ADHD does not persist into adulthood but it does um the numbers here are that it affects 2 and a half to

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5% of adults however in this study Ginsburg and his team go on to say that 80% of adults who have ADHD don't have a diagnosis 80% so try to keep that in mind that might mean that they chose not to get a diagnosis or they simply do not know that they have ADHD so when you see these low numbers keep in mind that there's a very um um a very high number of undiagnosed adults out there and as we already heard um in the previous talk there is a frequent co-occurrence of ADHD with a lot of other disorders so

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so-called pure ADHD where a person only has ADHD is actually very rare that only occurs in 5% of cases it is much more likely uh for a person to have one of these other disorders so-called disorders I hope I hope you know every time I say disorder I'm saying it with air quotes um so frequent co-occurrence with autism dyslexia disc calula which is has to do with counting and arithmetic math um dyspraxia which is a Developmental Coordination Disorder depression dysemia which is a mood disorder anxiety

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disorder substance use disorder bipolar disorder and personality disorder I'm saying this to draw your attention to the fact that the the student I mean for you know going back to the previous talk the student who you think is just lazy could actually be struggling with a lot of these things and um from what I've heard from speaking to people with ADHD many of them feel a very deep feeling of shame because they do not want to forget deadline they do not want to forget to sign up for things um they

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don't want to um forget to renew their passport and realize it the day before a flight that is very hard for them and very shameful and embarrassing um and so they don't need our judgment they need our support and our empathy and um I hope that that's something that I can get across to you today uh okay so next I'm going to talk about what an inclusive classroom might look like and I'll give you some specific tips maybe you can put in the chat what you believe an inclusive classroom would

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look like before I read you a quote from some of my favorite authors so go ahead and put in the chat what do you think an inclusive classroom would look like what makes a classroom inclusive considering the different way students can process information multisensory teaching very interesting activities that Target different intelligences everyone feels good pair work collaborative work and now it's going too fast for me to read everyone can learn um cater for everyone in the group a place where everybody is accepted and

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respected engagement of all students collaboration work in pairs it must be tolerant flexible open to changes place where everyone belongs and feels successful comfortable environment for everyone differentiated teaching um where you teach neurotypical students to understand respect and include the other ones and cater for every need I really like that I think if we can build a classroom where we where we teach all of our students to be allies for each other and to advocate for each other so that the students who

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need the support don't always have to ask for it I think that's a wonderful place a lot of Collaborative Learning I'm seeing tailoring making sure students don't have to sit all the time that can move while learning yeah that's one of my tips did you come to the earlier presentation um thank you for your ideas keep them coming yes so um here's a quote from uh one of my favorite books and I know people were asking for books in the last session I don't know if you'll be able to see it with my filter

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it's teaching languages to students with specific learning differences this is the second edition of the book it's by udit carmos who's my PhD supervisor and an Margaret Smith um it's it's a really great resource it's made for teachers uh but it's research backed which I think makes it really powerful and talks about all aspects of teaching languages and here's what they say about the inclusive classroom in its purest form inclusion calls for a radical restructuring of the

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education system so that it will be equipped to accommodate all Learners and as such it looks beyond the integration of disabled Learners in the mainstream to a vision of participation and engagement in education which is accessible to all the evidence suggests that accessible and diverse classrooms are beneficial to all Learners so rather than the the previous thinking of taking students who have additional needs or specific learning differences and putting them in a separate classroom um including everybody in the

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same classroom is uh the way to go according to these expt words at least so how can we actually do that and I'm going to show you some tips uh actually it's a lot of tips so let me tell you how I'm going to break it down the first section is going to include some changes that you can make quickly and without too much effort on your part hopefully the second section will have some changes that might require a little bit of planning on your part and the final um tips might even require uh administrative approval

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depending on your institution and your teaching context um but what I want you to keep in mind there are two things I want you to keep in mind the first thing is that you will not be able to implement all of these changes on Monday okay and if you try you will get overwhelmed and you will get burnt out um you cannot pour from an empty cup okay it's great that you want to help but don't try and do everything at once because it will become too hard and you will give up instead make small sustainable incremental changes and

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that's how your students will benefit your students won't benefit if you're stressing yourself out to to make everything perfect for everyone from day one and the second thing I wanted to remind you of was um while you're listening to this tip these tips think about how they could be helpful for your neurotypical students as well because we're talking about including everyone so here we go some quick changes that you could make allow your students to sit where they would like to

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sit many of your students especially if they're neurotypical uh sorry neurod Divergent will know um where they learn best in the classroom they'll know if it's better for them to sit at the front right up close to the teacher that's where they get least distracted um or they'll know if that if they need to sit by the window because they know that every 15 20 minutes or so they need to switch off their brain for a minute look out the window have a little break and then come back to where they are with

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everybody else uh I saw someone else mention this one as well free to move um if you've built this inclusive classroom where everybody else is aware that some people feel a very strong urge to move their body at sometimes in opportune moments then hopefully it's not too distracting if those people get up and move but if it is a distraction you could ask those students if they would like to sit at the back of the class classroom so that when they stand up and stretch and move or whatever it's not

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distracting to most of the class sitting in front of them um and I know that this is it really depends on your context and the age level that you teach I teach at the University level so my students have a lot of freedom they can get up whenever they want to uh but I know that that's not always an option another thing you can do is offer frequent breaks so going back to the zoom teaching I was telling you about the sort of standard for teaching for teaching hours would be 90 minutes a 15 minute break followed by 90 minutes so

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what I did instead um because I thought people didn't want to sit in front of their computers for 90 minutes straight was to break it up into three 1hour blocks with shorter breaks in between and the students responded really well to that and you could make those blocks even shorter um this one could perhaps require administrative approval but uh I think in most context you're allowed to say when there's a mini break I know a lot of people have started incorporating so-called brain breaks into their

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teaching and I know that those can be pretty effective uh buo already talked about the importance of giving good instructions when I give instructions to my students I typically try and get their attention make sure uh that they're at least it looks like they're listening to me then I will give them the instructions orally and some of them will get started working and I will remind them don't worry I'm about to put them on the board and then I will write the instructions on the board so they know exactly what

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they're doing um I like to also write down the times so as teachers I know we love to say okay you've got five minutes for this task or you've got 15 minutes for this task I don't know about you but many times I've lost track of the 15 minutes myself and I don't remember when we started the 15 minutes so what I do now is I say you've got 15 minutes for this task I look at my watch it's 11: and I write down 11: to 11:15 on the board so that I don't have to keep track

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of the time and the students don't have to keep track of the time they can just focus on the task so taking away a little bit of their mental load and um allowing them to focus on the task at hand rather than these little uh administrative sort of timing things um excuse me also to do with instructions try not to um jump into things too quickly after giving people instructions give them time to process what you've said you might need to say it again uh you know we've all been there where we've missed something that

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was said in the classroom and uh and suddenly you notice oh no the teacher has stopped talking did she ask a question what was the question I didn't hear it uh so it can be helpful to just ask thing ask things multiple times or wait when you're writing those instructions on the board only write the instructions on the board don't start talking about the homework that's du next week or another task that the students have to do people cannot read and listen to two different things at

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the same time um I'm guilty of this I'm sure we're all guilty of this but it's something to think about next time you're standing at the board don't speak just write what you need to write buo already mentioned breaking tasks and to smaller chunks it can make it much more manageable and less daunting we talked about how people with ADHD some people with ADHD might find it difficult to start a really big task but if they see a much smaller task broken into smaller chunks it might be

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much more manageable for them and uh I know bu talked about adding images and things like that um but something to think about is that we have to balance stimulation and distraction so for uh some Learners they would really love to have bright colors beautiful pictures that is going to make them want to read the article because it looks interesting and it looks like it's going to be fun other Learners will be distracted by the colors and the photos um so if you're able to maybe if you work with digital materials offer a

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fancy flashy version and a more um paired down very Bare Bones version by the way if you hear noise in in the background that's my son running up and down the hallway it's something he likes to do he calls it the Zoomies okay he's okay he's just getting his energy out so what are some things that might need a little bit more planning well making group work op optional I know Claire talked about this a little bit in her talk I know it's a language class I know we would love for our students to

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talk trust me the students will talk to each other and work together when they feel comfortable and when they feel safe there are some days where they just don't want to talk people and they still get the work done um so think about when you can make group work optional and when it absolutely has to be group work or pairwork uh I'll give them the chance this goes into Universal Design for Learning a little bit udl give them the chance to um if it doesn't have to be a written assignment if they just need to show you

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that they learned something can they record a narrated PowerPoint can they send you an MP3 voice note that you can grade instead think about different ways that they can present to you that they've learned something and this goes for assessments as well I don't know what learning platform you use we use Moodle at my institution I know there's also Blackboard um they have a highlight feature where you can highlight the current week which can be really helpful um for people who might be overwhelmed by a ton of text on a

00:34:18
mogle course it's a small thing but it can make a big difference um it's important to give your courses and your classes a clear structure and a routine so that students know what what's coming and they don't have to waste precious um processing power thinking about what's coming next because they already know and they can use it for other things I know we're language teachers but you might want to offer guidance on notet taking time management organization speaking of time management

00:34:46
I'm almost finished sorry will and um and just giving them little tips on things that help you and showing them different ways to take notes I love doing this you know have my for really force my students to brainstorm and at the end of it when when they're doing a listening task and at the end of them some some of them say I hated that that was not my way of taking notes and I said excellent you learned something about yourself today let's see if the next way of taking notes is better for

00:35:13
you and you show them a different way a variety of different ways of doing this and maybe one of them will resonate with them tap into that hyperfocus let them as as much as you can give them freedom on topic Choice let them write about what they want to write about um and I say it every time we we're we're doing presentations or essays or whatever choose something you're interested in because only that will keep you going right I'm clearly very interested in my PhD topic because that has to keep me

00:35:40
going over five years it's a part-time PhD you have to be dedicated to keep going and interested and of course know who you can send students to for further assistance if they need testing accommodations or special educational plans individual educational plans those sorts of things finally things which might need administrative approval it's an easy change for me I'm very flexible and punctuality with my students I don't see it as a personal failing that a student is late I say you

00:36:11
know just come in quietly sit down get started um but they're adults and I know that's very different uh to when you teach children but perhaps reassess your ideas about punctuality and what I always offered deadline extensions no questions asked to all of my students um I don't require a medical certificate or anything I just uh let them have the extra time and uh we did have a very cute puppy in one of my classes once it was a service dog in training we weren't allowed to pet him but he was very cute

00:36:51
his name was I think zigzag if I remember correctly adorable but keep this in mind that this is something that might be helpful for students um a separate room for assessments if that's possible again that's typically something that you would talk about with your administration because you need an extra supervisor for that and this one might be a little bit controversial when my students are doing longer stretches of quiet work so they are their writing or reading or maybe even sometimes

00:37:17
during assessments I allow them to use earplugs to block out all the extra noise or even put in their headphones and listen to music no I'm not afraid of cheating um but you know your students best and uh some of my students they look on their faces when they find out they can block out the noise with their favorite music it's it's worth it and I like to think that they can perform better when they feel more comfortable oh okay most of all I encourage you to be open be patient be kind um and ask questions if you don't

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know just ask questions on the next slide are my references feel free to screenshot them some of them are um papers which you may or may not have access to sorry about that on the next slide I'm going to show you some further reading resources which um are more aimed at teachers and practitioners especially the last two texts by an Margaret Smith I think they're really wonderful resources and um I encourage you to check them out so go ahead and take a screenshot of that if you interested thank you so much for

00:38:28
listening and for sticking around uh all the way through the third talk here's how you can keep in touch with me