Know your ADHD student. Discern his best methods of learning. Talk about the lesson, write down portions of the lesson, and draw illustrations to depict important details of the lesson. Each approach you use will give you a little more insight as to how the student learns best. Pay attention to reactions and feedback from each approach.
Use your imagination to combine techniques. After deciding which methods of instruction work best with the ADHD student you are tutoring, find ways to make those methods more interesting. Many students will learn from a mixture of various techniques. Mix them up and make them as interesting as possible as his attention span is likely very short.
If lecturing is one of the techniques you must use, be sure to vary your voice in tempo and cadence. Do not drone on in a monotone, as the ADHD student may drift off task after only a few words. Make those words count by getting directly to a point and saying it not more than twice.
Use pictures, drawings and illustrations as much as possible to make words and ideas take on more meaning to the ADHD student. Depending on which subject you are tutoring, colorful flash cards and opportunities for the student to put her own interpretation of the subject into pictures and drawings may be helpful.
Many ADHD students struggle with organization. Teaching the student how to color code lessons, or ideas within a lesson, will help train him to keep things separated and more organized in his own mind. Math concepts, for instance, may be drawn or written in red while the description of the concept and how it is used might be in blue. English work might be done in green and kept in a green folder. Helping the student learn organization skills will be at least as important as any actual lesson being tutored.
Talk to the student to obtain his views and outlook on the subject he is learning. Just as important, be sure to listen to him. Read between the lines when he speaks to better understand the frustration he may be feeling even when he, himself, does not understand it. Gaining an insight into his view of a lesson will aid you in locating ways to communicate an issue or idea that is staying outside his grasp.
Expect to have to spend a great deal of time of some lessons. Concepts and central auditory processing of information for many ADHD students takes many different strategies. A child may understand one lesson from the outset, while another just doesn't make sense to your student. Never should your temper snap while dealing with the ADHD learner. Patience and perseverance will make the time spent together rewarding for both the student and the tutor. Take time to know the student and what works best for her, then find ways to keep it interesting.