Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often face difficulty with reading comprehension. Maintaining attention span is important to direct intellectual focus on a stimulus, recognize and decode words as well as retain information in long term memory. Deficits in attention imply inability to store and retrieve the information being read. Children with ADHD find it difficult to control attention, thereby, have trouble in understanding the text, interlinking the context and associating it with previously learned information.

Here are some strategies that can help to improve reading comprehension in students with ADHD:

• Provide Interesting Content: As far as possible, provide engaging content to develop the students’ interest in reading. They may find it easier to concentrate on comprehension passages that are stimulating, interesting and are not very lengthy.
• Minimize Distractions: Even slight distractions while reading can sidetrack ADHD students. Allow them to read in short time intervals and take frequent breaks in between to stay focused. Teach them to use a reading strip in order to maintain place on the page. If the content is lengthy, help them break down the text into smaller passages to avoid getting confused.
• Encourage Active Reading Strategies: Teach students to underline and highlight important points while reading. Provide them with different colored pencils or highlighters to set apart information according to their relevance in the content. This will help them to focus more on the important content when they are able to sustain attention.
• Ask For Predictions: When reading a passage with the child, frequently ask him to predict what would happen next. For this, he will need to interlink the storyline and character to frame the plot for the story. It does not matter if the predictions are correct or not. Making predictions will encourage him to stay attentive throughout and you can also assess his comprehension skills.
• Let Them Subvocalize: In contrast to reading silently, allowing children to read aloud can also help with comprehension. Reading in mind can be troublesome for children with ADHD. Subvocalizing allows them to input auditory signals into their minds which, in turn, help them to stay focused on the material being read.

See-N-Read Reading Tools can help to improve comprehension skills in students with ADHD. For more information, you can call at (630) 236 – 5592.