Hi - I sometimes get people writing to me asking for ideas for there practice this is one conversation I have had. I thought I'd post it, and then we could discuss it together. For today I'll just post it, then I come back later in a day or two and reflect on what I said and my reasoning behind it.

This first bit is what some on emailed me......
I have another one of those children I need you help with this 6 year old won't make it onto our case load he has a diagnosis of ADHD.???. he is a neat kid..one of those children born at 26 weeks so always been behind.. great family and classroom teacher they have some teacher aide time for him.. he is a classic in that he can't focus very long very superficial thinking not really able to perservere and consolidate his learning .. you can see he wants to try and get on with it very directable back onto task but so distractable......... He does not yet know all the alphabet but can copy the leters not too bad he is one of those kids who no doubt is spending all his time just thinking how to draw the letter and can't move no spelling/expressing ideas.. I don't think he has a big cognitive delay but his learning is very affected by his inability to sustain attention.. So what can I suggest i don't just want to say he doesn't meet our criteria and do nothing...

This boy like dinosaurs & tanks wondered if I could some how link a topic such as this that he really likes to his hand writing. Any idea where you can get resources with the alphabet if there is such a thing eg.. Army tank shaped letters of the alphabet?? any quick ideas you have would be great.

Then this is what I answered....
Hi - off the top of my head, I'm thinking that giving him and the key people in his life some knowledge around attention , how it develops and how it is so important to memory would be information that they could then apply through out his learning career. In particular the use of chunking and using association.
Then find out which letters he doesn't know and only target these within handwriting, TA time. Go for three at a time, anything that is a tall letter call a dinasour letter, anything that is short like e or n call a tank letter, then come up something important to him that could be used for letters that go under the line. Then encourage someone to do a search on clip art to find a shape of a dinasaour tank etc. Then the TA could either shrink the pictures and he writes inside them for example he has a worksheet with a line of tanks a line of dinosaurs etc, blocked practice, starting dots could be inside the spaces, tracing moving to independent forming etc. Then a line of tank , dinosaurs, etc. With the teaching asking him questions like " dinosaurs are tall, today we learnt three letters which letter was tall ? Is h tall ? What is tallest a dinosaur or a tank? Where would h fit best as a tank letter or a dinosaurs letter? This way you would assist his memory by chunking letters into three groups dinosaurs tanks and submarines (?). Finish the lesson with him writing a basic sight word that used some of these letters. e.g he. Get him to sight read the word he and move on learning to spell it. Get the TA to write the word on his hand, through out the day mum and dad and the teacher ask him to read the word to them and to say what the letters are. Varying the question, either the letters or reading so that he truely has to think of the answer not just rote learn without processing it. The next day encourage the child through prompting questions to tell as much about the lesson as he can remember. Get him to practice accessing his memory.

Rita

Note this moving between tanks and dinosaurs and letters takes divided attention and may be a challenge, however it is a skill he needs to learn.........