Dear Teacher: Real Advice from Real Educators

Dear Teacher,

Experienced educators and authors Peggy Gisler and Marge Eberts give solid advice about everything school and education-related.

Parents should send questions and comments to dearteacher@dearteacher.com

QUESTION: My second-grade daughter has very poor concentration. Her teacher commented on this several times last year. Does that mean that the child has ADHD? – Wondering

ANSWER: When children have trouble concentrating in school and are overly active, disruptive, and inattentive, many teachers and parents jump to the conclusion that a child has ADHD. However, to find the answer to your question you need to start with a routine visit to your daughter’s primary-care doctor when it is possible for you to do so. Tell the doctor about the teacher’s observation of your daughter. You might even want to bring the child’s report card along to the appointment. Ask the doctor to test her for ADHD. Some doctors will do the evaluation. However, others will give you a referral to an ADHD expert because testing for ADHD takes several hours and also a large amount of time to analyze the test.

If your doctor does not give you a referral and you still want testing, you should seek out a referral from the special education teacher, a psychologist or guidance counselor at your child’s school.

Here are the areas that will be used in helping to make the diagnosis of your daughter: • Social history: a typical day in your daughter’s life

• Medical history: any medical concerns that your daughter might have • Family history: ADHD runs in families • Strengths and weaknesses: activities the child can and can’t focus on • Education: how your daughter is doing academically

By the time the clinical interview is over, most experts who diagnose and treat people with ADHD will have a good idea of whether your daughter has ADHD.

QUESTION: My children in elementary and middle school spent way too much time on homework before their school went online. How much time should they have been spending? Are there any shortcuts that could lessen their homework time when school resumes? – Too Much Time

ANSWER: One dividend of online schooling was that most students found their homework time reduced as much of it was done during online classroom sessions. However, you are definitely right that your children were probably spending too much time on homework before they went to online schooling. Just about every study done on homework time reinforces your view.

Teachers routinely exceed the most common recommendation of 10 to 20 minutes of work for first grade. And this amount of time should grow by 10 minutes

for every year in school. This means the third grader should be working no more than 30 minutes and the seventh grader no more than 70 minutes. And the recommended time limit for high school seniors will be 120 minutes.

The unfortunate fact about homework time is that children who exceed or greatly exceed the recommended homework time limits do no better on standardized tests than those who are closer to the recommended time limits. At first homework assignments serve the purpose of establishing responsibility. Later on, they should be reinforcing classwork. And Harris Cooper, psychology professor at Duke University and an expert on homework, would also like to see a bonus question that prepares students for the next day’s classwork.

In some school districts, the value of homework is limited to 20 percent of a student’s grade. Where the effect of homework on grades is minimal, parents may want to stop their children from working too long on homework. Of course, this should be discussed fully with the teacher. Also, it is very smart for parents to work with their school’s parent/teacher organization to set up a homework time policy. Some schools will only assign four nights of homework a week.

Perhaps, the best shortcut in limiting homework time is for students or students and parents in the early grades to get out all assignments and make a plan about the order in which they will do the assignments. Another shortcut is for students to skip problems that truly stump them after they study similar problems in textbooks and notes. These are likely to be discussed in class so students get a grasp on them, or they can be taken up with the teacher. Another effective homework shortcut is for students to have a planner with their work placed where it belongs as well as having homework assignments clearly listed. This stops time being wasted looking for materials needed for homework or trying to find out what their assignments are.

QUESTION: When my child reads, she has trouble recognizing words that have short vowels. For example, she might confuse let, lot and lit. She is in first grade. Is this a common problem? – Reading Problem

ANSWER: Having problems with short vowel sounds is not unusual for beginning readers. Not knowing the short vowel sounds can make spelling difficult too. Here’s why. Consonant sounds are generally sounded out easily as they are largely crisp clear sounds. On the other hand, there are small differences between how short vowels are said.

The word family approach can make learning the short vowel sounds easier. For example, the “an” family teaches the short “a” sound as different consonants are placed in front of it to produce van, man, tan, and can.

We have developed 126 short word family stories with games called Skinny Books that will help your child learn short vowel sounds and to read hundreds of words. You can find out more about them on dearteacher.com.

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