It is important for your child’s teachers to have the resources and good tips on how to accommodate a child with APD best while learning in the classroom. This will allow your child to flourish at school at the same pace as their peers.

ADAPTING TO THE LISTENING ENVIRONMENT:

Methods to help improve student’s success with auditory info

1. Preferential Seating: Seat students closest to the teacher, with a direct line of sight, away from known auditory distractions and competing noises. Placing students in a smaller group or 1:1 instruction (in a quiet area) is very difficult when background noise cannot be controlled. Be aware that when multiple small groups are working simultaneously within the same classroom this will result in increased background noise and increased communication difficulty with individuals with APD
2. Use of Assisting Listening Devices: individual ear-level FM systems can be used to improve the signal-noise ratio of the teacher’s voice vs. competing noise and improve processing and reduce auditory fatigue

INSTRUCTIONAL ADAPTATIONS:

Purposeful adaptations made by the teacher

1. Instructional Transitions: Reviewing past material before beginning new lessons, Pre-tuning techniques to focus the student’s attention on the subject coming up (Words such as listen, ready, and remember this one)
2. Extended time on tests or untimed testing: APD will affect the RATE at which a student can process a question, formulate an answer, and write the response
3. Delivery Style: Gaining attention before speaking, speaking at a slower pace, gestures & visual aids.
4. Time to process auditory information: During classroom participation in Q&A, it is helpful to give the APD student additional time to process auditory inputs due to difficulty with quickly and accurately processing speech.
5. Reduce motor activities during verbal presentations: Avoid giving complicated directions during physical activity
6. Buddy system: A buddy system can be started by seating an APD student near a student who is strong in auditory processing. Assistance may include note-taking support, assistance/repetition of instructions, study groups, etc.
7. Listening Breaks: Occasional breaks (non-auditory tasks) to avoid auditory fatigue.
8. Frequent checks for comprehension of instructions or directions: The teacher can watch for signs of inattention, decreased concentration, or understanding and provide quick checks for comprehension of subject review for the benefit of APD students & entire class.
9. Repetition: Instruct speakers to repeat rather than rephrase, the same message is presented verbatim with enhanced enunciation or more slowly, as speaking rate can influence comprehension. Repetition allows for the filling in of missing components, whereas rephrasing provides a whole new message with new “holes” to be filled. Repetition of classmate’s responses to verify the student has heard the questions or responses made by other students.
10. Pre-teaching new vocabulary and new concepts: Pre-reading or reviewing the next day’s coursework will help when introducing new concepts.
11. Provision of copies of class notes: Students with APD will have great difficulty simultaneously taking notes and listening/processing auditory information. This can cause notes to be inaccurate, incomplete, or illegible. To ensure the student gets home with the information they are responsible for learning, provide students with information in written form (snapshot of classmate/buddy notes, copy of teacher’s outline, access to all required info online; notetakers). A direct line of sight for A/V presentations is beneficial.
12. Employment of multimodality cues and hands-on demonstrations to augment verbally presented information: Presented sequentially rather than simultaneously.

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