A tip I find very useful in both my own teaching and when recommending strategies for parents to encourage students with ADHD to write more (and write more cohesively) is what I refer to as “margin planning”. In the olden days when students wrote with a pen or pencil on a piece of lined paper this meant drawing a 4-5cm margin down the left hand side of the page to plan or write in bullet point the development of a story. Then on the main page the actual story can now be developed more fully and attention can be focussed on the composition of sentences and details about characters, places and events. I do use this more for narrative writing than other genres, but it can easily be adapted. I do still teach this as a strategy with paper and pen as it is most transferrable for school.
However, the “high-tech” version of this is a bullet list of the main events of the story in one lesson and then these points being developed further in subsequent lessons. The obvious advantage to typing is hat the original text in bullet points is not “wasted”, it can be repurposed in the main body text without retyping (whereas written points need to be re-written).
During tutoring sessions this is a great way to scaffold the writing process – a full plan in one lesson and then time can be spent creating an interesting piece of writing using interesting language and correct grammar (as the “creative” part is essentially complete). For parents it provides a god starting point to help their children at home – the child can write the bullet points, have a quick chat with mum or dad about the plan and then get started on the writing with a task set (write out 4 of the bullet points and I’ll come and check on you and help). I have also successfully introduced this into classrooms as a secondary support for my students where the teacher was willing to give it a try.
