Grammar, Games, and Good Guys: Unconventional Conventions for ADHD (and Other) Students

by Celeste Garcia Madsen, Mater Dei Academy, Columbus, Ohio

"How many of you believe that grammar is an important job skill?" I asked as I passed out copies of an actual business letter my husband and I received with the identifying information removed. Hands went up tentatively, until one of my ADHD students commented, "You don't get grades in grammar when you're an adult." I smiled and asked students to read the brief letter. Initially, they were more curious about the author than the grammar in the letter. The same student commented again, "I can't even understand this letter." Other students chimed in with agreement. Not only was the letter hard to understand, but the grammar and spelling errors were glaring.

Students spent the period in teams identifying errors and rewriting the letter. At the end of the period I decided to return to the comment of the day, "You don't get grades in grammar when you're an adult." I asked the class what grade they would have given the letter. Unanimously the grade was an F. Then I asked if they thought the author knew what he was doing on the job. They said, "No." Finally, I asked if they would trust that person to do a good job for them. Again, they said, "No."

I had students calculate a loss of commission so that they would see what a loss of an account could mean in terms of income. They were shocked. Students discussed the letter for the entire week, because for the first time grammar was important in the real world outside the classroom. They were hooked!

The interest that this activity sparked caught my attention. My ADHD students were actively engaged and on task. I asked the entire class what they liked about the activity. The answers of the ADHD students were revealing.

• The letter was real world.
• They got to work in small groups.
• The activity was short.
• The activity was a break from the normal routine.

While all the kids enjoyed the letter, their grammar skills still needed to be developed. So I broke this learning into three stages to make sure the ADHD students were able to successfully master the material. The three stages are acquisition, application, and articulation. Students need to acquire the skill, apply it academically in all areas of the curriculum, and articulate how and why they applied the skill.
 

Acquisition

The acquisition stage involves the basic learning of material. To help acquire grammar skills, several strategies have proved helpful.

• Present material in a variety of formats: video, websites, texts, worksheets, and lecture.
• Present information in small chunks.
• Work as a whole class, in small groups, and individually.
• Provide feedback frequently.
• Provide examples and tips.
• Use graphic organizers to help students construct information about grammar topics such as parts of speech.

The problem I've observed in my ADHD students is that the acquisition process breaks down. Worksheets are where I often first detect a breakdown in the learning of an ADHD student. These breakdowns, however, are not the same for each ADHD student. The use of multiple means of presentation will support students who may have additional learning difficulties often found in ADHD students, such as reading comprehension and memory problems. Repetition is another way to support ADHD students, but not the same thing, in the same way, over and over again. ADHD students are a great gauge of the "same old" since I lose them if I do the same things in the same way too often. In the case of diagramming sentences, practice seems to help because it provides a visual organizer of the sentence and points out the relationships between the words. Flash cards are another good example of using repetition to support learning in the acquisition phase.

The most important element for ADHD students in learning grammar is presenting material in small chunks. Adjusting the amount of material presented at one time and providing students feedback are essential during this stage. Knowing that a student has not acquired the information early makes a huge difference in managing confusion and frustration in ADHD students. Alternating between whole-group, small-group, and individual activities also provides ADHD students with the support of other students. A technique students seem to enjoy is making up their own tips to help them remember fine discriminations and exceptions. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities also help reinforce the information and move the student into the application stage.

One area that ADHD students in my room struggled with was recognizing adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, and prepositions. To help all students in the room become quicker at recognizing parts of speech, we play a flyswatter game I call SWAT. The process is quite simple. We form two teams. Each team has a poster board with laminated index cards that are attached by Velcro, usually twenty to twenty-five cards on each board. The index cards have words that are various parts of speech, such as but, brown, two, run, quickly. There is also a deck of index cards that have categories of parts of speech written on them. Each team is given a flyswatter. When the category, say conjunctions, is called out, the player uses the flyswatter to hit a card with a conjunction written on it. For example, in the case of conjunctions, the player might swat the word and or but. If the player hits a word that is the appropriate part of speech, the word is removed from the game board. Otherwise the card remains on the board. The next turn goes to a player from the opposing team (whether or not the previous player scored a correct swat), and a new part of speech is called out. The first team to clear all the words off its board wins.

Some of the students asked if they could make flash cards for conjunctions, articles, pronouns, and prepositions. The answer was, of course, yes. Getting their words from lists provided in the text, they quizzed each other using the flash cards and did significantly better the next time we played SWAT. Games like SWAT introduced an element of friendly competition into the room and helped me to see if students had, in fact, learned the content material. Plus the kids liked whacking things!
 

Application

In the application stage, students begin to apply the knowledge they acquired in the previous stage. Students also continue to learn in this stage as they receive feedback and make adjustments in how they use what they have learned. Some of the ADHD students experienced problems in this stage because they could not successfully apply the knowledge. Students were often able to tell me the book definition of a part of speech but not apply that information when looking at a sentence.

Two strategies that helped with the application of knowledge were peer modeling and color coding. Transparencies of worksheets provided an opportunity to use both peer modeling and color coding at the same time. We projected the transparencies onto the board in order to provide some flexibility in the way we used the worksheets. Sometimes we used the worksheet transparencies to complete the work as a group, and sometimes the students formed teams to have a relay race to complete the exercise. Comments from students indicate they like the racing activity because they are up and moving, able to pick the next person, and see other students model the work. Students also appreciated the ability to call on a friend for help with their turn. The use of colored marking pens allowed one student to finally make the connection that numbers are usually adjectives. When asked about the connection, the student said, "The green words are adjectives; I get it now." Finally, the student was able to apply the information to evaluate a sentence. In this case, watching other students complete the activity and visually seeing all the green words allowed the student to make the connection to adjectives.

The application stage continues especially into writing for other areas of the curriculum. What I noticed about my ADHD students is that the progress made in English did not necessarily transfer to social studies. The grammar activity done most frequently across the curriculum in my classroom is editing. One of the significant lessons I've learned about ADHD students is that time of day matters. Activities that require a lot of concentration are better done when my ADHD students are alert and awake. Mid-morning and after lunch seem to work best. Additionally, a brief mini-lesson or checklist reminding students of what to look for when editing helped everyone, especially the ADHD students.
 

Articulation

The final stage, articulation, involves students being able to tell how and why they have applied a particular grammar skill. Their intended audience is third and fourth graders. To help my students get to the stage of articulating the parts of speech, we created grammar superheroes. Every student was assigned a part of speech. Their task was to create a superhero for that part of speech and give a two-minute character speech introducing themselves and what they can do in a sentence. To create the superhero, students needed to come up with a name directly related to the part of speech they were assigned, give the character super powers based on how it functions in a sentence, and create tips and examples for the third and fourth graders in the school. The goal of presenting to the third and fourth graders proved to be a significant motivator in the way the ADHD students (in particular) approached the project.

To start the project, we talked as a class about super powers such as the ability to transform words, travel through time, replace words, and change speed or position. The ADHD students focused on developing super powers and predictably got carried away. The class was hooked but needed support. We decided to brainstorm the assignment in small groups to generate a lot of ideas and support for students who were having trouble. The brainstorming provided ideas for everyone to get started.

When presentation day arrived, I wondered if the assignment was too demanding for my ADHD students. Each student completed a graphic organizer on the parts of speech for the presentations. From the completed graphic organizers, I could see that the ADHD had learned about the parts of speech during the unit. I laughed the whole way through the presentations. Students, in costumes, articulated clearly how the parts of speech functioned. For example, Superhero Mr. Connect, with his tool belt, joined sentences with a hammer; Superhero Principal Preposition organized the direction of action in the sentence; and Superhero A.V. (adverb) had ly's shooting out of his gloves to create adverbs. I loved watching them all!

Continuing the articulation process, the class is currently working on a skit called Extreme Make-Over: Sentence Edition. The superheroes will show up again to fix a sentence in extreme need of repair. The experience of working to develop characters and skits has helped everyone in the class have a better command of the parts of speech. The kids just realized that this project is working on their editing skills. We'll see if there is carryover the next time I read through social studies projects.
 

Afterthought

In listening to the feedback of my ADHD students, they were able to tell me a lot about how to teach them more effectively. Their enthusiasm for these projects has helped me to share what has worked in my classroom. Not only do they realize that grammar has real-world importance, but they are having fun building their grammar skills.

Celeste Garcia Madsen teaches a seventh and eighth grade self-contained class at Mater Dei Academy in Columbus, Ohio. She has presented programs on universal design for learning and ADHD at local and national educational conferences. Celeste is a member of the Ashland University Early Elementary Advisory Committee and a frequent guest speaker at Ashland University about ADHD, where she is working on her master's degree.

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