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