Attention seems to be in the pedagogical spotlight recently. Of course, since teachers have taught getting students to concentrate on what they want them to concentrate on has been something they’ve yearned for. Rightly so – students can only learn what they pay attention to.
Tom Sherrington in discussing attention draws on the now famous Oliver Caviglioli infographic and explains that attention is the first step on the journey of thinking, remembering, retrieving and using information.
Peps McCrea says “attention is the gatekeeper of learning” and is “essential for information to be used, remembered, retrieved, applied and retained”.
Unless students are giving teachers their full attention at all points of the lesson, all our time spent planning and honing our high-quality explanations and devising our well-thought-out tasks will be wasted.
Attention can seem an intangible concept. How can we really be sure that students are giving us their full attention? It is useful to have a whole school strategy for what attention looks like, some schools have adopted strategies such as SLANT. Where this is not in place, or along side it, teachers can set their own routines, underpinned with a no opt out culture. I have focused this blog on two key points in a lesson to help build routines around attention.
Start of an explanation
Whether you are just finishing the do now task and are about to go through the answers, or are about to give an explanation in art of how to use a scalpel, or in PE before you teach a new skill, having a routine for gaining silence is key. Having a count-down script that you use each time as a prompt for silence can help with habit forming. The count-down can vary depending on exactly what you want pupils to do and the subject you are teaching them. An example of a count-down is shown below.
- Stop your conversations
- Pens down
- Looking at me
- Everyone listening
Other teachers prefer to count from 1 to 3 reducing their volume with each number and then give a clear explanation of their expectations. Both are practices I see lots of teachers using regularly in our lessons. However, a common pitfall of both that is often overlooked is that not all students follow the instructions. Some are whispering, often students are still twiddling their pens and the teacher starts their explanation anyway. The more frequently the teacher ignores this non-compliance the more this behaviour is unconsciously embedded.
Teachers often believe it would take too long to ensure that all students follow their instructions. Whilst this can be true initially the more students practice the routine with no opt out the more embedded the routine becomes for all and the faster the process becomes reinforced. It is important to make sure pupils ‘practice perfect.’
To help with the routine for attention teachers can:
- Use the same prompt each time.
- I find it really useful to stand it the same position in my room at the start of my explanation as a prompt to students.
- Make a really exaggerated point of checking that all students are complying before you start talking. One (I think Lemovian) way to do this is to pretend you are looking around a pillar in your exaggerated checking, so that students ‘see you looking.’
- Using non-invasive strategies where students have not followed your instructions and praising those that have.
- Waiting until you have 100% compliance.
Keeping attention during explanations
In an ideal world once we start talking our subject would be so interesting and our explanations so captivating that we would have all of our students hanging on our every word. Unfortunately, this is not always the experience of most teachers. To help maintain attention it can be useful to again build routines in these parts of your lessons:
Restate your expectation that students need to be giving you their full attention and explain what this will look like.
Looking for compliance
- Looking at your class throughout your explanation and using your least invasive strategies to correct any students that lose their focus.
- Checking are students still following your instructions for example are hands still empty are students still looking at you?
- Expect silence, students will struggle to pay attention if there is background noise, even if they are whispering about the work.
- When you become really tuned into attention you will be able to ‘read your class,’ reading their subtle signs and signals if they have lost attention even when they are still looking at you, enabling you to notice a glazed or far-away look. Just saying their name when you are giving your explanation soon brings them out of their day dream and lets them know you are watching them.
Questioning
- Make it explicit at the start of your explanation that you will be checking understanding throughout. This can be with quick questions on a mini white board or using cold calling to ask at least 3 students the same question. These questions do not have to be complex, it is more about checking for listening than deeper understanding at this point and keeping students on their toes knowing they could be questioned at any point.
- These questions should be short so that the pace is not too slow and you risk losing students attention
James Crane in his recent blog on attention discusses how mini white boards can be used to maintain and check for attention.
However you design your routines for attention make sure you have high expectation of all students and that that you expect 100% compliance from all.
By Jody Chan
Class Teaching 