Unlocking Potential: College and Other Choices for People With LD and ADHD

Sophie is really, really angry! Her sister took her stuffed gorilla. Then Sophie triped on a toy truck. Furious, she slams out the front door and just keeps running. Soon, though, she calms down and starts to notice the ferns and birds. Before long she is ready to be back with her family.

Just like other kids, Zinkoff rides his bike, hopes for snow days, and wants to be like his dad when he grows up. But Zinkoff also raises his hand with all the wrong answers, trips over his own feet, and falls down with laughter over a word like “Jabip.” Other kids have their own word to describe him, but Zinkoff is too busy to hear it. He doesn’t know he’s not like everyone else. And one winter night, Zinkoff’s differences show that any name can someday become “hero.”

In the well-researched and compelling Standardized Minds, former journalist and economist Peter Sacks launches an exhaustive attack on the national obsession with testing — and lands a few hits. If you think you’ve heard every argument against standardized tests, think again. Sacks methodically picks away at our feeble attempts to measure the mind, reaching back into the history of testing with unsettling revelations about the creation of the first intelligence test and its many flaws. He deftly illustrates how the belief of inferior cultures motivated the creator of the SAT college entrance exam and takes on all that standardized testing has wrought: ability grouping, gifted programs, state accountability efforts — even the effect on parents whose perceptions of their own children are often shaken by scores on a sheet of paper. Standardized Minds is a persuasive must-read for parents, educators, and lawmakers that challenges our basic assumptions about intelligence and pays homage to the talented minds we may have overlooked in our fervor to rate the human brain.

An ADHD boy helps rescue his dad because he pays so much attention to what is going on around him. He is the one who knows where to go get help.

The goal of this book is to help readers recast the paradigm they use to think about the condition, encouraging them to help ADHD kids develop their unique gifts. It begins with an overview of current ADHD diagnosis including definitions and a sample of a case study. Each subsequent chapter reframes certain ADHD symptoms in a positive way and reinforces this transformation with awareness exercises designed to increase the appreciation of the child’s traits.

This book features 169 reproducible activities which provide opportunities for active learning and student practice in the study skills and strategies most important for students with special needs. Teaching students with special needs to use study skills and strategies effectively is an important step in transforming these students into independent learners. In addition to the reproducible activities themselves, each chapter in this book contains suggestions for using the activities, mastery assessment, and an answer key.