ADD Education

What is ADD

The diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), was used to describe a person who had trouble focusing but was not considered hyperactive. This diagnosis has however been changed to fall under the umbrella term Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has been found to be one of the most common disorders diagnosed in children. The symptoms can also differ widely from person to person. According to the South African Journal of Psychiatry, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder affects 2% to 16% of children between 6 and 18 years old. It was also found that the symptoms of 60% to 70% of these children will persist into adulthood.

ADHD has been divided up into three main types. The first is inattentiveness, which is when a child struggles to concentrate but is not hyperactive. The second is Hyperactivity or impulsivity without signs of inattention. And the third type is a combination of all three; inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

How does it affect learning?

Children diagnosed with ADHD/ADD can find school particularly tough, especially when moving from preschool to higher grades where they are required to sit still and focus on the teacher talking for longer periods of time. Difficulties experienced by children diagnosed with this disorder can include an inability to attend to the teacher’s instructions as well as auditory and visual confusion.  It is also common to experience memory problems and have a hypersensitivity to visual and tactile sensations such as fluorescent lights.

Large assignments can also make children with ADD feel overwhelmed. Processing and understanding directions can be challenging, and it is likely that they will also struggle with complex problem solving.

Other difficulties can include organizing and planning for multiple tasks and deadlines. It is likewise difficult for children diagnosed with ADHD/ADD to sit still through long classes and tests.

How Catch Up Kids can help

Catch Up Kids is a learning programme which focuses on the individual needs of children who are having difficulty academically or who are experiencing hurdles and falling behind in school. Some of the things that makes a Catch Up Kids programme so effective are the fact that each child’s programme is tailored specifically to their strengths and weaknesses, that it pulls from a comprehensive overseas curriculum, and that its methodology is based in the principles of human learning and behaviour.

Catch Up Kids focus on address issues such as emotional coping, attention, planning, inhibition, memory, flexibility, self-monitoring, time management, meta-cognition, problem solving, social skills and many more. All the aforementioned skills can be grouped under the term; executive functioning skills. By improving these skills, children will be more empowered to function better in school and to catch up where they have fallen behind.

“Catch Up Kids has one goal – to produce confident and empowered learners who have all the necessary skills to keep up with the class and academic demands”