STATEGIES FOR IMPROVING ATTENTION
The student must be an active participant. Remind them that what wonderful
characteristics and qualities they have. Explain that these are things they
need to improve in order to do their best in school and get along with
others. Focus on the specific ideas that apply to the behaviors your child
has shown often enough to cause them problems. Children will need patient
and long term guidance to improve behaviors and they may not be completely
corrected. Keep in mind that some of these characteristics that cause
difficulties in school, may translate to a strength that will make them
better suited to a specific profession later. Each section below has 3
behaviors followed by some explanations and strategies for helping.
1. Has trouble staying alert.
2. Attention hard to attract
3. Loses focus unless interested
A student may not have enough mental energy to control their attention.
Even the act of trying very hard to concentrate can deplete mental energy.
This child may indicate he is bored, or yawn while his activity level
increases. Sometimes physical energy is increased in order to keep mental
energy high enough to sustain attention. These children need the freedom to
move as needed during a lesson and be given legitimate errands and
activities that will allow them to move around. A tap on the shoulder may
be enough to bring attention back. When doing homework, they may need
breaks often.
4. Has trouble finishing things
5. Has difficulty starting work
6. Has a hard time doing work
It takes a lot of effort to maintain necessary effort. A child who can pay
attention to a video game and not in the classroom needs to learn clues from
that. A video engages several senses as the same time. The student should
make a point to look at the teacher or students as they speak and
occasionally monitor themselves by asking, "Did I hear what they said?" Use
hands to be finding necessary pages in the book, point to where they are in
the book, or write down key words about what is being discussed. The more
senses they can involve, the less pathways are available for distractions.
At home, it is important to provide a distraction free area(as much as
possible) and guidance in homework completion with frequent breaks.
7. Has troubl falling/staying asleep
8. Has trouble getting up in the morning
9. Looks or acts tired
Some children have sleeping problems that greatly affect ability to pay
attention to the appropriate thing for sustained periods of time. They may
have trouble winding down to go to sleep and/or wake easily and have trouble
going back to sleep. In some cases, the sleep is restless. Quiet
activities before bed and a soothing steady background noise that plays
through the night may help calm some children. Calming videos can help.
10. Work and behavior unpredictable
11. Has good and bad days
12. Seems to "tune in" and "tune out" often
Consistency of ability can be frustrating to teachers, parents, and
students. It is very common for students to feel their brain just works
better one day than another. Be careful not to use "good days" as proof
that they are not trying on their "bad days". What they need instead is
help understanding what they did differently so they can practice those
positive behaviors.
13. Easily distracted by sounds
14. Focuses on unimportant details
15. Easily distracted by visual things
Children may have trouble focusing on the lessons with the sounds, visual
stimuli, things to touch, or their own daydreams all around them. When they
focus on the lesson, they may then have trouble picking out what is
important. Teach children to be aware that they sometimes do this and
practice checking themselves and bringing their focus back where it should
be. Parents and teachers can give them cues when it is obvious, but
students need to learn to monitor themselves because it is often not obvious
to others. For students who have trouble sorting out what is important,
they may need to be provided a copy of notes after they have taken their
own. They can then learn to see what was important compared to what they
had written down. The copy of notes may also allow the student to listen
more carefully. Writing down what was just said while listening to what is
being said now is not an easy task for someone who is having trouble
focusing on one thing.
16. Forgets what he has just heard
17. Focuses too deeply at times
18. Misses important information
Discerning what is the main idea and what details are important can be a
challenge. Students who get hung up on details may seem to be
perfectionists and work very slowly on everything. Some others may
understand the larger concept, but are careless about details. Math is an
area where lack of attention to detail can cause lots of trouble. Help
children be aware of the necessity of balance. Using a timer may help the
slow, detail oriented child gradually speed up. Using checklists for math
steps, proofreading, and similar activities will help the child learn to
independently complete complex skills.
19. Mind is not actively involved while listening
20. Has unusual ideas and thoughts
21. Free associates/daydreams easily
Attention difficulties can cause a mind to not actively connect new
information to old information. When this happens, there are no
associations to aid memory and opportunities to develop higher thinking
skills are lost. Lots of discussion that links information may be necessary
to help them to develop the skill. They can also learn to ask themselves
questions about other things like this they talked about yesterday, for
example. At the other extreme, children's minds may engage so actively that
new information sends their mind racing through a series of connections that
end up in completely irrelevant thoughts. This is where students need to
learn to monitor themselves often to stop these though processes before they
get off the subject. You can even practice this by allowing them to sit and
let their minds wander with a time limit or other cue to return to the
original thought.
22. Doesn't concentrate long enough
23. Shows uneven concentration
24. Has trouble shifting attention
Focusing attention for the appropriate amount of time and being able to
shift it when necessary can be difficult. In order to do this, a child
needs to learn to focus to a certain degree on all the relevant things
around him and then determine when it is appropriate to pay attention to
each. Using timers and taking breaks can help. The child's awareness of
this and some guidance in questions with which he can monitor himself will
help him to learn to control it better.
25. Craves excitement
26. Has trouble delaying gratification
27. Gets bored easily
Most of us choose behaviors because the results will provide us with
satisfaction. A student with an attention problem is likely to do
everything for immediate gratification even though long term consequences
may not be what he would want. The immediate gratification may be for
things or excitement. In both cases, discussions of various situations and
what long term consequences may be might help them to learn to look beyond
the moment in their choices and be better at predicting long term results.
For children seeking gratification from things, collections could be great
hobbies and motivators. For students with needs for excitement, guide
carefully into activities that will satisfy and discourage behaviors that
may be destructive.
28. Doesnt' think before acting
29. Has trouble planning work
30. It unprepared for next activity
It is very common to hear of children who do not think before they act.
This is another case where students need to be guided through fictitious
situations or their own past experiences asking "If I do this, what will
probably happen? Here is when they learn to analyze whether that was the
results they want. (Hopefully they are also learning some compassion about
what would be a good result for everyone and not just themselves.) This
also helps them to learn to make a plan. This can apply to behaviors, but
also to setting expectations for their school work and projects. Students
will need guidance in what steps are necessary to get each "plan" to work.
They need to learn to visualize how they want things to turn out and with
guidance, learn to set forth a plan to achieve that.
31. Does the first thing that comes to mind
32. Does not use strategies or plan ahead
33. Does not think through decisions
Thinking about available options are also necessary to making any plan.
Help the child develop a list of different choices he could make about a
behavior or a school project. Make a pros and cons list together to teach
the thinking process that should be involved in making choices. Using past
instances of bad choices will be good teaching opportunities for exploring
what other options would have been better. Talk about historical decisions
and how different choices would have changed the course of history and what
things are like for us today.
34. Is overactive or fidgety
35. Is disorganized with time
36. Does many things too quickly
The pace that a child reacts to things greatly affects his effectiveness at
considering options and making choices. It may be necessary to help the
child learn to slow down by counting, taking deep breaths, or using self
talk before he can apply the skills to make choices. Pace can also affect
quality of school work. The same techniques may be necessary to make the
choice to do work more carefully. It can be especially difficult in
subjects that demand synchronization, such as writing a paragraph. Motor
skills to form the letters, organizing thoughts while using spelling,
punctuation, capitalization, and grammar, and vocabulary use are all
components that must be sychronized perfectly for a paragraph to be
acceptable. Is it any wonder that composition is one of the most difficult
areas? Students with attention problems may need to always use all the pre-
writing steps that they were taught when they were younger.
The above information was compiled by Dana Newingham, EVSC Special Education
Consultant
