Is there a school psych? If so see if she/he can go into the classroom and do an observation. I actually went into the first grade class and watched as well for about an hour and was surprised at what I saw because DS was very off-task there and he's not usually that bad at home. However even with that I couldn't figure out if he just didn't WANT to do the work, if he couldn't figure out what to do, or if he was distracted by what was going on in the room. He was just sitting there staring off and looked a bit irritated. Then the school psych went in and observed while he was dong a paper-pencil math test and said he was on-task 49 percent of the time and it should be more like 80 for a first grader. When he wasn't doing the work he was looking out the window, playing with his eraser, etc. I STILL am not sure if this is ADHD or if this is DS being lazy or dysgrapic or fatigued from writing so much. It can be really hard to figure it out.
I was looking at lists of signs for ADD this weekend, and most clearly state that a child has to have symptoms both in school and OUT of school. Does he do this in a structured but not school environment? (Sports, an art class, that kind of thing.)
My DS15 also spend a lot of time staring at walls/ceiling about his homework/classwork at times. He also really likes to solve entire problems in his head and dislikes using scratch paper. He tells me to leave him alone and that he is thinking. I don't think this is ADD but does because a problem.
