Using an iPad to support independent writing for a student with ADHD

Kate Friedwald
So, Daniel has ADHD, and what that means for him is that he prefers to learn visually or through audio, and his iPad has been an amazing tool for his learning because he could listen to himself when he was writing, words were prompted for him. So, how’s that writing going today Daniel?

Daniel
Good, I wrote this for my newest blog post.

Kate Friedwald
So you’re going to get the app to read it to me?

Daniel
Yeah.

Kate Friedwald
Ok.

App
Room 1. When you first go into Room 1, it is amazing. It looks awesome.

Kate Friedwald
If he didn’t understand something, struggled with reading something that was on paper, he could type it onto his app and he could read it from there.

Daniel
When people send me mail and I can’t really do read-to-write on it, I copy it then paste into this and then I make it read to me.

Kate Friedwald
And he can now structure his own learning because he can see and hear what it is he needs to be doing.

Daniel
Now I’m writing two paragraphs instead of two sentences.

Kate Friedwald
The iWordQ app that Daniel specifically uses, when he types in a few letters, it will bring up for him a word that he could be looking for. So if he types in “wh” it brings up variants of words starting with “wh”. If he then taps on one of those words, it reads that word to him and he can select yes, that’s the correct word, and put it in his writing, or no and he’ll try another one.

App
Friendly, friendly.

Kate Friedwald
Once he’s written a sentence, he can play back the whole sentence, make sure he’s got the correct words, and that it makes sense. He has specific activities that he does digitally, and then he reinforces those through pen and paper. He really likes to plan on paper and then do his writing digitally, and with the flexibility in a classroom like this he’s successful in choosing those.