Journal of Attention Disorders

Running head: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE JOURNAL
REFLECTIVE PRACTICE JOURNAL
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE JOURNAL1
Background
The personal experience which will be the key theme of focus of my Reflective Practice
Journal is my recent practical experience as a student execute and administrative assistant (EA)
for a school situation in the locality. As a part of my activities and practical work experience
outcomes, I was required to observe a classroom teaching where the teacher was conducting a
reading class across children belonging to Grade 1. A key specialty of this class which I
observed however was that the teacher seemed to teach and communicate with a particular
student in a manner different than other students. I observed the teacher to keep this student
seated closer to her following which she explained the instructions of the reading exercise using
instructions, terms and explanations which were much simpler than the ones she used for the
rest. Additionally, while she seemed to trust the rest of the students in terms of their reading
abilities, she ensured to repeat as well as allow this student to repeat instructions on his part.
Lastly, what surprised me was that while the teacher praised every student after an individual
reading session, she specifically announced in class while appreciating this student. Upon
inquiring from her after this class was over, the teacher informed me that the reason which
prompted her to teach this student differently was because he had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD). The teacher further educated me on the fact that classroom management
strategies have been evidenced by the Canadian Pediatric Society (CPA, 2018) to be an effective
way or ‘best practice’ for teaching and ensuring positive learning outcomes across ADHD
students. For me the idea of classroom based management strategies was new and thus, seemed
to an exciting and stimulating discovery to work upon for my reflective practice journal.

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE JOURNAL2
Reflection 1
Considering the above experiential background of reflection, it is evident that the key
focus of my RPJ is concerning the acquisition of novel knowledge and understanding the
rationale underlying the usage of specific teaching and learning methodologies. With this
respect, the key teaching and learning methodology which I am focusing upon for this RPJ is
regarding the content and rationale underlying the implementation of classroom management
strategies. Thus, this prompted me to my first reflective question:
Question 1: What are classroom management strategies and why are they used for
teaching children with ADHD?
Upon questioning my teacher regarding the above she replied me that classroom
management strategies were the name given to a range of specific teaching methods for the
purpose of improving executive functioning – a key skillset found to be inadequate across
children with ADHD (Pan et al., 2019). Upon being told the same, I realized that I hardly know
what the terms ‘executive functions’ refer to, thus prompting me to address the following section
question:
Question 2: What are meant by executive functions and why are they of relevance to
children with ADHD?
In addition to the above question, the next area of personal knowledge gap which seemed
to stimulate further research was concerning the examples of teaching strategies which are
considered for classroom management of ADHD children. Thus, this prompted me to arrive at
the following third question: