What Is the Task Timer App and How Can It Help Students With ADHD?

Task Timer – Task Management App – App Store

Task Timer is a great executive functioning tool for helping students with ADHD strengthen their time management skills. Using this app, they can set times for specific tasks using a built-in visual timer, and can break down homework assignments, projects, and other school assignments into manageable steps. Students can add new tasks, like projects or upcoming tests, then set deadlines, receive notifications, add notes to tasks, and even filter them to just show overdue tasks. There are many useful features on this app to help students with ADHD build stronger time management skills.

What is MindNode and how can it help students with executive functioning challenges?

MindNode

MindNode is a useful app for students with ADHD that helps them organize their ideas into visual maps and outlines. This tool is useful for brainstorming before writing a paragraph or essay, along with taking notes when reading or listening to a lecture. Using the app, students can connect their thoughts with branches, group them together, and create visual maps to help them present information in an organized manner. The visual maps can also be converted into outlines, helping students see their ideas in different formats. The app offers customized colors, themes, and stickers.

What is the myHomework app and how can it help students who struggle managing their homework?

myHomework Student Planner & Digital Hall Pass System

myHomework is a digital assignment book that helps students with ADHD track their homework, projects, upcoming tests, and schedules. It allows users to create customized themes and includes reminders of upcoming due dates, the ability to prioritize tasks, and calendar synchronization. It’s easy for students to enter new tasks and then organize them by specific classes or due dates. The app can be used to break tasks down into individual, more manageable steps, helping students feel less overwhelmed and more on top of their workload. This is a great app for building time management, focusing, and study skills. It is a great organization app!

Opal

Opal – The #1 Screen Time App

Opal is a great app for helping students with ADHD build their focusing skills and avoid distractions so they can stay on task when completing their schoolwork. With the app, users can set a list of websites and apps that will be blocked or limited when they are working. It helps prevent mindless scrolling and surfing online for hours on end. Instead, it tracks app usage, gives students scores and information about their habits, and even integrates rewards to help them stay focused and motivated.

What is the app Flashcards Deluxe and how can it help students improve their study skills?

Flashcards Deluxe Lite App – App Store

Flashcards Deluxe is a useful app for helping students with ADHD create digital flash cards that they can use when studying and memorizing information for quizzes and tests. They can create their own flash cards or download shared ones and then can organize their cards into different categories and themes. It allows students to create visual drawings on their cards or add pictures, and integrates repetition of cards students struggled with, helping to ensure they learn the information before they are tested. Additionally, the app offers a text-to-speech feature and includes quizzes on the information they are studying with multiple choice answers.

Students with ADHD often struggle with the rising organizational demands of school. Encourage your child to try these apps to help them build stronger time management, planning, organization, and overall executive functioning skills.

While apps can be helpful tools for students who have ADHD, most students can benefit from one-on-one executive functioning coaching to further develop these skills.

If you are looking for individualized tutoring or executive functioning coaching in NYC, contact us at www.eblcoaching.com to see how we can help your child.

Frequently asked Questions

How do I choose the right app for a student with ADHD?
When choosing an app for your child with ADHD, consider the specific difficulties your child is having. If they need help with time management, choose an app that helps them build time management skills. Likewise, if they struggle with organization, staying on task, or study skills, find apps that can help them develop those skills.

Which apps help students with ADHD build their organizational skills?

There are many apps that can help students with ADHD build their organizational skills. Some of these apps include myHomework, Task Timer, and MindNode.

Do apps really help students with ADHD focus?
Yes! There are many apps that can help your child with ADHD improve their focusing ability. The apps can help them set reminders, reduce distractions, and learn tips for improving their executive functioning skills.

Dr. Emily Levy has been helping students with ADHD build their academic and executive functioning skills for over 20 years.

The post 5 Best Apps for Students with ADHD appeared first on EBL Coaching.

As students move through school, the executive functioning demands increase rapidly. Their school work will typically require stronger executive functioning skills, including planning, organization, task initiation, time management and other related skill areas. Without well-developed executive functioning skills, students may have difficulty excelling in school. Help your child develop stronger executive functioning skills with the ideas detailed below.

Visual Schedules

Children with executive functioning difficulties often become easily overwhelmed with a large workload and struggle to complete all the tasks they need to do in a given day. Help your child feel less overwhelmed and more in control of their day by creating a visual schedule. Start by creating a poster for morning tasks; list each item they need to complete when they wake up, such as brush their teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, and put their belongings in their backpack, and draw a picture next to each item to visually display the task. You might even add check boxes next to each item for every day of the week so they can check off each item as they complete it. Create a similar checklist for tasks they might do when they get home from school, like have a snack, complete their homework, go to an activity, eat dinner, shower, and brush their teeth, along with the corresponding visual images. The more structure and order you can bring to your child’s day, the more you can improve their executive functioning skills.

Distraction-Free Workspace

It’s important that your child has a quiet, distraction-free workspace that they use each day for completing their homework. This might be a desk in their bedroom or even a spot on a communal table, like in a kitchen or dining room. Make sure they have all of the supplies they need for completing their homework, including pens, pencils, paper, highlighters, scissors, and so on. When the supplies run low, help your child re-stock them before they start their homework to ensure they don’t wander around your home mid-homework session searching for supplies. Also set a consistent homework time, which might be right after school or after a short snack or movement break. Try to make the time and space where your child completes their schoolwork as consistent as possible.

Time Management

Many students with executive functioning challenges struggle with time management. Help your child develop stronger time management skills with the ET/AT strategy, as follows:

Have your child choose one assignment to start with and ask them to predict how long they think it will take to complete that task, and write the ET, or estimated time. Then have them track how long it actually takes them to complete the assignment and write down the AT, or actual time. They should do this for each assignment, comparing the ET to the AT, and they will likely note that when they first start using this strategy, there will be a big difference between the ET and the AT. However, the more they practice this strategy, the more realistic they will become with their time and the more these times will start to merge.

Incremental Breaks

For children with executive functioning challenges, sitting for long stretches of time to work on homework can be extremely difficult and can feel overwhelming. As a result, they might do anything possible to avoid starting their work. Try an incremental break strategy, where your child sets a timer and works for 20 minutes, then takes a 5 minute break. Have them do this cycle three times: 20 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break, then take a longer break, around 20-30 minutes, and then start that cycle again until they are done with their school work. This approach helps them chunk their workload into smaller increments so it feels less overwhelming and more manageable.

Working Memory

Working memory is an aspect of executive functioning that plays a role in many academic tasks. It involves one’s ability to hold and manipulate information in their mind, which can affect most aspects of school, including reading, writing, and math. You can help your child build stronger working memory skills by playing games! Try playing the game Memory, where you flip over a series of cards and each player has to match two of the same cards to make a match. This game requires your child to remember the placement of a previously turned over card while looking for a match. You can also play a family story telling game, where one family member starts a story and the next person repeats what was already told in the story and then adds the next few lines, then moves onto the next family member, and so on. It’s a great game to play with friends as well!

Executive functioning skills become increasingly important as children move through school. Help your child develop stronger executive functioning skills with these ideas and they will be well on their way to success in school.

The post Help Your Child Develop Stronger Executive Functioning Skills appeared first on EBL Coaching.