Paying attention can be a struggle for most people. Many circumstances can affect concentration/attention. Is the topic something interesting? Are you tired? Is there added stress in your life? In today's world of getting things in an instant, no wonder there is a struggle to keep and maintain attention. Adults can have better control of their attention than a child. Remember our discussion about the brain last week? A child's frontal lobe is not fully developed until their mid-twenties so, decision making is not at its best.
Dr. Levine has some great insights and suggestions about the importance of attention & some great ideas to share with loved ones that may struggle in this area:
The Importance of Attention
Paying attention is sometimes called concentrating. In this chapter we will use both terms attention and concentration, since they mean about the same thing. The ability to concentrate or control your attention is needed to do well in school, although just about everbody has some trouble with attention sometimes. Most of us have been warned: " Pay attention, " "Watch what you're doing," or "Keep your mind on your work." Yet, as we will see, concentrating is not always easy. Attention is a complicated function. For some students it's especially hard because their minds get out of control. They find that they keep "tuning in" and tuning out" as their minds wander or drift off in a classroom. They may not listen well or hear what the teacher is saying, and this causes problems for them. To understand attention and problems with it, it is important to understand how attention gets controlled by our brains.
Deciding What to Concentrate On
In school there is so much to watch, to listen to, and to think about. when you sit in a classroom, you can watch the teacher, the other students, the chalkboard, the bulletin board, or the tree outside the window. You can listen to the teacher, the clock ticking, some noise in the corridor, or the ventilation system. You can be thinking about what your teacher is saying, about what you're going to be doing after school, about the clothing that the kid next to you is wearing, or about some problems that you're having with your brother or sister.
Doing well in school is in some ways like watching television. In order to see what you want to on TV, you have to tune in the right channel at the right time. Not only that, you must concentrate on the right channel for the right amount of time if you want to get enough out of the program. In school, attention is your brain's channel selector when you are trying to decide what to watch, to listen to, to think about, or to ignore.Share this with your children and friends who may be empowered by this information to help them begin to be the best they can be in school, work, life, etc. Tomorrow's post will take us further on toward controlling our attention. We will discuss filtering out distractions.
Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine
As a classroom teacher I see this everyday. Students who are disinterested in the topic or school in general usually can't sit still for more than 10 minutes max. As teachers, we need to find ways to channel their energy into a positive learning environment. I think that filtering out distractions would be a great idea, but that means that I would have to have 3/4ths of my class in the hallway :)
ReplyDeleteI know the reality of the classroom is a difficult thing to manage and at the 4th grade level, unfortunately, apathy starts setting in. Hopefully some of the suggestions we discuss this week could be shared with parents to discuss w/their child. I had key phrases I would say to my attention-challenged students, like "what screen are you focused on?" We had discussed early about how our mind puts up lots of movie screens...which one is most important to focus on during class?? Sometimes it helped get them focused 5 mins longer than they would have been & it helps them to begin taking responsibility for their attention choices.
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