What would happen if four kids with ADHD teamed up to help each other do better at school? They’d create The Homework Squad. Prisha, Mateo, Michael, and Hunter meet and decide to work together for a year to identify and test different skills to help them.
Dr. Joshua Shifrin’s book, The Homework Squad’s ADHD Guide to School Success, provides strategies and skills to help kids improve reading, writing, math, listening, memorization, concentration, and more!
Here’s an excerpt:
We decided to call ourselves the Homework Squad. We made a pact:
- Meet every Tuesday after school.
- Research at least one study skill each week to help our ADHD.
- Test the skills together.
- Add every skill that works to our super-sacred, ultra-official guidebook: THE HOMEWORK SQUAD’S ADHD GUIDE TO SCHOOL SUCCESS
We’ve now met for a whole school year and have come up with over 100 amazing ADHD study skills.
KINGDOM KEYS
The Homework Squad discovered that some ideas kept popping up over and over again in our research. We decided to label these skills the “Kingdom Keys,” because they are so important for unlocking an ADHD brain. Some Kingdom Keys include:
- Pace, don’t race. Many ADHD students want to finish every assignment quickly before they get bored, or because it’s overdue. Slowing down can actually help them finish faster.
- Break it down. ADHD students can feel overwhelmed by thick books, big projects, or long tests. Breaking an assignment into small pieces can be the key that unlocks success.
- Set goals and reward yourself. Build in rewards for your hard work. Treat yourself when you reach a goal.
- Practice. Any skill worth truly mastering is going to take practice. We know it’s a cliché, but practice really does make perfect.
These key skills turn up in some form in most of the chapters because they are fundamental to developing good study habits.
In each chapter, the Homework Squad listed the most common challenges we faced. For each challenge, we’ve put together the tricks that worked for us. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find a fun journal prompt that encourages you to try out one of the tricks and reflect on whether or not it worked for you.
We don’t expect every single trick to be a good fit for you (that would be slightly weird), which is why it’s a good idea to try them on for size. We suggest grabbing a separate journal. Go ahead and answer some or all of the questions once you read the chapter and decide which tricks you’d like to use in the future.
★“Meet the Homework Squad, four very different and racially diverse students with one thing in common: their ADHD diagnosis… The tips and tricks, appropriately, are not one size fits all, so readers are encouraged to try them all and keep track of what works… An important, affirming, and beneficial resource.”
—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
Related Books from Magination Press
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The Homework Squad’s ADHD Guide to School Success
The Homework Squad is here for kids with ADHD! This easy-to-use guide will help with key study skills to improve reading, writing, math, listening, memorization, concentration, and more! Bite-sized tips and tricks, journal prompts, and advice for challenges help kids with ADHD recognize how they learn best and act on that knowledge.
This is an accessible, straightforward, and relatable guide to key study skills for kids with ADHD that features a cast of characters with ADHD to enliven the lessons. The author covers an array of areas where kids with ADHD might struggle academically to help kids recognize how they learn best and act on that knowledge.
