Tick tock, tick tock, the clock only moves one minute more. The door slams shut, the office phone rings, the sweeping of eraser shavings slowly drift to the floor, and in the background you hear the faint voice of the teacher calling your name. “Samantha…. SAMANTHA???” and then suddenly the face of embarrassment appears because you don’t know what is going on. “Sorry Ms. Johnson, I was distracted”. Oh distracted, that ten lettered word that kills the flow in every teacher’s lesson. The everyday struggles of students and even teachers within the classroom setting. So as a future educator I posed the question of “How can we improve student’s concentration in the classroom?”. I believe our answer is in Stability balls and activity breaks. By incorporating stability balls and mini activity breaks throughout our classroom, I believe the success and concentration of our students will vastly improve. The topic of improving concentration is one with very high interest to me as a future educator. The first article used to support my question is titled “The Effects of Added Physical Activity on Performance during a Listening Comprehension Task for Students with and without Attention Problems” within these article researchers set up an experiment with two focus groups. The first focus/test group was asked to sit in a regular chair and doodle, and the second group was asked to sit on an exercise ball and doodle. Throughout this experiment, researchers focused on different students.
When there are too many distractions in a class, students are less likely to focus on what is being taught. Distractions cause behaviors in the classroom, limiting classroom instruction. It is my goal to ensure that students are receiving and understanding each lesson or topic. In order to provide this for my students, I will
Engaging students in the classroom can be a difficult task. Understanding the process of how students learn can help a teacher adapt the lesson to meet the needs of all students. I will encounter students that are not intrinsically motivated so I will need to find different ways to motivate each and every student. Understanding how my students learn can provide me with insights as to how to help each student learn which will minimize classroom management problems.
Additionally, Paula struggles staying focused and on-task during class instruction. Paula frequently gets lost and distracted with the material in front of her, but Paula makes up for it with her dedication to answer the question correctly. Frequently, Paula observes her peers respond during whole class discussions and also answers some of the questions asked during these discussions. The teacher uses these opportunities as a learning opportunity to highlight the correct answer or guide the students into saying the correct answer. It is great that Paula wants to participate in classroom discussions because she remains fully engaged and frequently offered the opportunity to state his own understandings about the concept or skill he is being taught. Drawing on this observation and the use of intervention work, the teacher can plan future opportunities to allow the students to not only communicate their understandings about the content they are being taught, but to also further drive in the content he is being
As a student, Sara becomes noticeably distracted in class when she must listen to information that has been repeated to her. Sara’s capacity to quickly store new data in her inventory the first run through compared to her classmates’ capacities to do so explains why she tends to tune out and drift away. Sara’s teacher should make an adjusted instructional plan for Sara, for instance, assigning Sara with small tasks such as counting down from ten to keep her engaged while the other students transition into the next session of class or allow Sara to read every other page to the class to engage her in the story-telling process.
Kamp, C. F., Sperlich, B., & Holmberg, H. (2014). Exercise reduces the symptoms of attention-
Every teacher encounters the challenge of getting students engaged in work in the classroom. While some students enthusiastically walk into a classroom each day, others need motivation and inspiration to focus in school. This issue is significant for school leaders because the role of the school is to provide a place for students to engage and interact with knowledge. If students are not
Park’s classroom is designed to limit student distractions. The students are seated facing the board in columns and rows. This seating arrangement is used during the warm-up and instructional period. However, when the students are working independently, they have the option to work by themselves or rearrange their desks to work with their peers. The teacher’s desk is off to the side so that each student is visible while the teacher is at the desk, although Mrs. Park rarely sits at her desk during the class period. The frequently used materials such as calculators, paper, pencils, and textbooks are easily accessible but do not impair students’ ability to see the
Children who are diagnosed with ADHD struggle with managing behavior in school environments. As research has shown, students have difficulty paying attention and can be disruptive in class. This often leads to a decline in their academics and can hurt future academic achievements. There are a number of tools, programs, contracts, and classes that are available to students with ADHD. Along with a lack of attention and an abundance of hyperactivity, “twenty to thirty percent of ADHD children have an associated learning disorder of reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic” (Daley & Birchwood, 2010). It can be difficult, as a teacher, to manage a classroom with children with ADHD. It is important that teachers, parents, and students, understand the opportunities available to them to help the child succeed.
Stalvey and Brasell used stress balls to help students focus. The authors indicated that students that are restless and hyperactive often cause distractions with in the classroom environment and they make it difficult for the teacher to teach effectively, and for other students to actively engage in a lesson. They wanted to be able to include stimui and control distractions. The research that was conducted provided students both with and without ADHD with a stress ball to squeeze, and hold. Thier data showed that stress balls helped students with sitting still and listening in the classroom, but in writing it was a hinder (Stalvey & Brasell 2005).
Grasping a student’s attention may be a risky task especially if one is trying to maintain it for a while. While viewing the “Whole Brain Teaching: Grade 1 Classroom” video from WKL, the teacher gains the students’ attention by using attention grabbers where students reply to the teacher. For example, the teacher in the video used the word “class” the students then reply by saying “yes?” next the teacher then says “class, class”, the students follow with “yes, yes”. The certain phrase said by the educator stands out to the students and understand when the teacher says that word they must give the teacher all her attention. With time the students will build up the knowledge of understanding that time is time for silence and all the attention
No matter what, a routine is important within the classroom, but outside of the basic routine, it’s important to shake things up to provide different activities to keep the students’ attention. Some students work better within groups, and others on their own, so it is very important to make sure a teacher has a balance of that. This will also help strengthen the students’ skills by working on both of these. An example of engagement could be based on a kindergarten classroom. As they’re developing and reaching certain developmental milestones, listening and sitting still is difficult for them. Kindergarteners weren’t made to sit in a chair all day and be silent, movement and talking are a huge part of the various developmental milestones they surpass. Having activities that get the kids up and moving can be very beneficial to not only them but the teacher as well because it keeps the students
Keeping students engaged and on task can be, at times, the most difficult part of being a teacher. You have to come up with new ways to engage them and keep them focused on learning, especially at the end of the day when all they can think about is going home.
The classroom with active learning can be described as “an extremely busy place, an environment in which important efforts by students can easily go unnoticed. When teachers do not notice students’ desired academic and social behaviors, those behaviors cannot be praised. In such instances an existing and potentially effective reinforcement contingency is “asleep” and needs to be “waked up’’ (Craft, Alber, & Heward, 1998). Based on this description and the study of previous research, the authors developed a research question with three parts directed toward increase “recruiting responses by the students, teacher praise received by students as well as students’ academic productivity and accuracy” (Craft, Alber, & Heward, 1998). about how to increase teacher attention while increasing
There are several ways that student-centered learning can be described, and they all lead back to the same basic idea, the student. First, student-centered learning can be defined as a discipline that involves the interaction of a team of students that experience creative learning to be used in the real world (Thornburg, 1995). Thornburg (1995) also mention that students are essential to the classroom, just like a team member is essential to a game. He says that teachers are part of the definition of student-centered learning, but they are not the main attraction. The students are the focus, and the teacher is the one who can assist among small groups of students. Eaton
During my observation time in a kindergarten classroom, I have noticed that the students have a wide variety of abilities, attention spans, interests, and love for learning. When it comes to the teacher’s instructional strategies, she intentionally takes into consideration all of the above characteristics to make sure each student gets what they need to be most successful. During lessons students are engaged because of the teacher’s ability to implement interests of the student’s into things and giving them options. If an error occurs during a lesson, the teacher normally, allows for the student who got something wrong to try again, or to call on a friend to help them out. This way the students are still giving the answers and not the teacher just telling them the information. The teacher chooses a lot of small group instruction and centers where she can work with a small group, but then, easily monitor all the other groups to make sure they are on task and doing their work.