“Understanding the role of slow processing speed is essential,” Butnik writes. In the article, Butnik focuses on twice exceptional students-gifted students who also have additional learning challenges such as a learning disability or attention deficit disorder. For an excellent overview of many of the causes of slow-paced work, read Steven Butnik’s article Understanding, Diagnosing, and Coping with Slow Processing Speed.
Your first step in finding the best way to help this student is to determine whether a more serious issue is at the root of the problem. Here’s a summary of what we all came up with.
I shared what I knew on my weekly Periscope broadcast (you can see a replay here) and got lots more good tips from the teachers who were watching. To help this parent and her son’s teachers come up with some ways to help him, I did a bit of research, pulled together some of my own suggestions, and added strategies offered by other teachers. Furthermore, working at this slow pace means the student is simply putting too many hours in on school work, time that could be spent playing, reading, socializing, relaxing, or exploring other interests. Still, when a student completes work at a significantly slower pace than his peers, sometimes taking three or four times longer than everyone else, it can create problems for the student and his teachers: Group work gets more complicated, whole-class instruction is limited, and the student is too often put in an uncomfortable position as the one everyone else is waiting for. It’s easy enough to say we want all our students to work at their own pace, and in most classrooms, some flexibility is built in to allow for this. Not only are his teachers frustrated by the time it takes him to complete assignments, he doesn’t especially enjoy spending hours every night making all of his work just right. Although his academic skills are strong, he feels the need to complete every task to absolute perfection this means he finishes his work long, long after the rest of his peers. A parent recently asked me for advice about her son.
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