ADHD and Online Classes: What Actually Helps

The holes that only exist online

In a classroom a teacher sees a child's hands, their page and where they are looking. On a video call a tutor sees a head and shoulders in a small window and nothing whatsoever about the device the child is sitting at. That single difference accounts for most of what goes wrong, and almost all of it is fixed by how the room and the machine are set up rather than by anything pedagogical.

• The second tab. A child on a laptop has the entire internet one keystroke away, and there is no version of a video call in which a tutor can see it. Full screen, and the device on a shared table facing into the room.
• Notifications. One banner ends a train of thought. Do not disturb on, before the class, every time.
• The phone. Out of the room, not face down on the desk.
• The chat box, which is a private channel with no adult in it. In our classes it is for answers, not conversation.
• The camera. It stays on, and this is worth being unpopular about — it is the only signal the tutor has.

Bounded blocks, and why the timer is not about pressure

An open-ended instruction — 'work through these' — has no shape, and a task with no shape offers no obvious moment to start. Ten to twelve minutes with a stated end and a stated deliverable does. 'Four questions, then we mark them together' is a different task from 'do the exercise', even though the mathematics is identical.

The countdown is on the screen so that the end is visible without anyone having to ask about it. It is not there to hurry anybody. When a block runs out and the work is not finished, the honest move is to say so and extend it, because a timer that punishes is a timer that gets ignored within a fortnight.

Two 45-minute sessions in a week beat one 90-minute session for most of these students, and it is one of the few situations in which we actively recommend against the longer booking.

Changing the work, not only the timing

Each of these removes a hurdle that has nothing to do with the mathematics and everything to do with whether the mathematics gets started.

• Fewer questions on the page. A sheet of thirty is a wall; six on a page is a task.
• One question visible at a time when a screen is being shared.
• The first line of working already written, so that starting is not the obstacle.
• One instruction at a time, in writing, where it stays visible. A three-part spoken instruction is at least one part too many.
• Standing, pacing and fidgeting during a listening block — free online, and impossible to permit in a classroom.
• Homework sent in writing to the parent, not announced at the end of the class. Homework set verbally at 20:55 is homework not done.

Why the recording matters more here than anywhere else

Every class we run is recorded. For most students that is a convenience. For a student who loses thirty seconds in the middle of a method, it is the difference between a topic learnt and a topic half-learnt — because those thirty seconds can be watched again later without anybody having to admit to having drifted, and the admitting is the part that stops children asking.

The habit worth building is writing down the time rather than the question. 'Twelve minutes in' costs nothing during the class and turns the review into a two-minute job instead of a forty-minute rewatch.

What we do not claim to do

We teach mathematics and our other subjects in small groups on Zoom. We are not a specialist SEN provision. We do not assess for ADHD, we do not produce evidence for access arrangements, and we do not offer therapeutic support. Those are jobs for the school and for clinicians, and a tutoring service that implies otherwise is selling something it does not have.

What we can do is run the free demo class and then tell you honestly whether the format is going to work. Sometimes the answer is that a group of four is one person too many, and we would rather say that in week one than in March.