Setting Up Your Classroom to

Setting up your classroom to help ADHD children According to the article "Setting up your classroom to help ADHD children," using proper care in setting up the physical environment of a classroom can result in profound benefits for students with special needs. When educating students with special needs, often the emphasis is upon behavior modification through a system of rewards and punishments. However, this article stresses that creating an environment that sets up a student for success rather than failure is essential.

This can be especially challenging in schools with physically open environments. Creating a walled-in place, ideally with four barriers, can improve the student's ability to pay attention if a fully enclosed room is not available. Although more inclusive 'clusters' of desks are often suggested as a way of facilitating group interaction and teamwork, this layout can prove to be too distracting for an ADHD child. Instead, the more conventional 'row' system layout may be superior.

Sitting the child near the teacher and away from students who are likely distractions; sitting the child away from loud noises and not directly near windows and doors are ways to create a more productive academic environment. The child should have a sense of the teacher's presence in the classroom as much as possible, as a way of reminding him or her to focus upon the tasks at hand. The teacher should be able to easily pace the classroom, moving between the chairs and tables to monitor the children's behavior.

If children cannot concentrate with the current layout, there should be a distraction-free area of the classroom, away from the hustle and bustle of other social interactions. Many of the suggestions of the article reinforce the need for a relatively traditional classroom, where student-to-student interaction is generally discouraged and the physical layout of the classroom reinforces the authority of the teacher.

The article suggests that the teacher looks at the classroom through the eyes of an ADHD student, rather than through his or her own eyes, and monitors the environment with an eye upon the types of distractions that can overwhelm the consciousness of an ADHD child. It also stresses the need for the teacher to remain constantly upon his or her 'toes' and look for potential pitfalls to the child's success, such as overly chatty neighbors.

Children who discourage rather than reinforce the ADHD behaviors should surround the most distractible students in the classroom. Keeping the room at an appropriate temperature will facilitate learning for all students, as well discouraging the use of 'toys' from home. However, while these suggestions may be valuable, it could be argued that a 'dull' and unstimulating environment could actually make it more, rather than less difficult for the child to concentrate, given the inability of the environment to hold the child's full attention.

Also, the other children in the classroom still need to get the message.