How do I get students to pay attention and stay on task?

Getting students to pay attention is one of the fundamental issues teachers struggle with on a daily basis. Engaging students is a precondition for learning – if students aren’t paying attention it doesn’t matter how good the lesson is. According to brain research, a number of conditions help capture the attention of students:

 Novelty and Relevance – The brain selectively attends to stimuli. When filtering out information, the brain tends to pay attention to items that are new or contrast with what is familiar. For example, if a math teacher were to dress as Cleopatra when teaching about number systems and place value. The brain also screens out what is less useful for survival while it pays attention to what it deems important or personally relevant. This is discussed later in the book.

Emotional State – When students’ emotional states are too high or too low teachers need to attend to this. For example, to induce calm, teachers might rely on ritual activities such as routine openings of the class. To energize, teachers might introduce novelty or unexpected change.

Laughter – Brain research suggests that laughter boosts alertness. Teachers should feel free to be silly or outrageous and draw students into this mood with the use of funny stories, costumes, dramatization, or other methods.

 Physical Movement – Vigorous physical activity is believed to increase blood flow to the brain. Consider starting class with two minutes of exercise to stimulate alertness.

 Downtime – Students need time to absorb and organize new information. Without this time, the brain shuts down with too much information overload. Teachers should pause regularly to give students time to absorb and process information.

The Main Idea’s Professional Development Extension: MAINTAINING STUDENT ATTENTION 
Have teachers think about the ways they capture attention through novelty, relevance, energy level, laughter, physical movement, and downtime and bring those ideas to a meeting. At the meeting have them share/demonstrate these strategies while everyone takes notes on the ones they would like to add to their own repertoire. This can take the form of a quick brainstorm.  


Reference : The Skillful Teacher: Building Your Teaching Skills - By Jon Saphier, Mary Ann Haley-Speca, and Robert Gower (Research for Better Teaching, Inc., 2008)