Two boys and one girl, all Caucasian, were selected for the study. Steve, a nine-year old third grade boy, diagnosed with ADHD, Matt, a ten-year old fourth grade boy with a learning disability in written expression and speech language impaired as well as ADHD, and Sharon, a nine-year old fourth grade girl diagnosed as Other Health Impaired and mood and anxiety disorders. The students received their medication in the morning before school. The instruction began in the Spring and was conducted in a hallway directly outside of a regular education classroom. Prior to beginning instruction, a baseline was established of each students’ typical writing abilities. In order to establish this baseline, probes were administered by using nine black and white photographs to each student individually and prompting the students to write at least three stories. In their (2015) book, Cohen and Spenciner discussed Probes as a diagnostic technique used to determine if a strategy is effective. In this …show more content…
80% of students that have been identified as ADHD struggle considerably with academic performance. Most students diagnosed with ADHD are included within regular education classrooms. This means that every teacher will have to deal with the weaknesses and challenges that students with ADHD will bring with them. I have learned first hand what a struggle it is to deal with a child who has ADHD. My oldest son was diagnosed in third grade with ADHD without hyperactivity or the inattentive type. After years of struggling to complete assignments, keeping up with home work, remembering multi-step directions and sloppy handwriting, we finally had a diagnosis. Unfortunately, we have found there is no “cure” or magic pill that makes all of the struggles that children with ADHD exhibit go away. There are however, as this study has shown coping and self-regulating strategies that can be taught to improve academic performance. The main deficits of students with ADHD are poor working memory, lack of organization, and inability to set goals and persist towards them. The aforementioned deficits are all necessary for skilled writing. These deficits are usually attributed to a weakness in executive function and can be aggravated when hyperactivity is present. The goals of SRSD are explicitly established with students as collaborators in their own learning process. The