Strategies for when your ADHD students are distracting others
In this video, Vanessa Castañeda Gill explains that supporting ADHD students starts with understanding the “why” behind distractions, and responding with subtle cues, movement options, and space for safe fidgeting instead of punishment.
Transcript
What can teachers do when ADHD students are distracting others in the classroom? It's a tricky situation on all ends, but there are some pretty good strategies that we'll get into about it.
First of all, it's important to understand why a student might be exhibiting these behaviors. Uh, it could be because the student is understimulated or bored and they're just trying to entertain themselves. It could be a matter of impulse control or it could be that a student is actually struggling with a task or doesn't know where to start and are just trying to distract themselves from the uncomfortable feelings that surround.
Once you get an idea of the reason a student might be doing that, it's also really important to make sure that they understand that their behaviors are distracting. A lot of the time we don't know that what we're doing is distracting to others and we can't always control it. So being able to talk one-on-one with the student, make sure you have that mutual understanding, and maybe even creating a nonverbal cue that you can use to, uh, kind of signify to them when that's happening without calling them out, uh, is a great strategy.
The other thing you can do is incorporate movement more into class periods. And that could mean just like putting a chair or a desk either in the back of the classroom or in the hallway for students to kind of migrate to if they just need a change of scenery in that variety or to pace back and forth to in the back of the classroom.
And the last thing I would say is, uh, allowing a little more space for that quiet fidgeting. Uh, whether that's using something like a spinner ring like I have right here, or, uh, a little bit of an unconventional method, but a simple one, uh, is using an unruled notebook. Uh, for some reason, for a lot of ADHD brains, unruled gives them a little more space and creativity to jump around to wherever they want and when taking notes, allow them to make doodles wherever they want and just helps a little bit with that stimulation.
If you want more tips on this kind of stuff, uh, you should check us out at socialcipher.com.
Follow us @socialcipher on TikTok and YouTube for more educator-focused videos about neurodivergence!
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