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Teaching Tips January 1, 2009 |
What does it mean to pay attention? How do you know when you have your child’s undivided attention? When he is looking you in the eye? When she is listening to what you’re saying? When he is concentrating on the exercises in front of him? Attention does involve concentration, but it is more than that. It is actually a system of controls that allow the brain to handle the enormous amounts of information that bombard us daily.
Attention is actually made up of three components: (1) mental energy; (2) input controls; and (3) output controls. Mental energy has to do with the brain’s fuel supply. The brain is the body’s engine, and like your car, it needs the right mix of ingredients and the spark plugs firing properly to send the right flow of fuel to the correct area of the brain. Mental energy allows the brain to remain alert, regulate sleep and arousal times, provide sustained mental effort even for boring tasks, and perform consistently. The primary factors impacting mental energy are nutrition, water intake, sufficient sleep, exercise, and allergies/medications. A high energy snack such as trail mix (nuts & raisins) with plenty of water should always be available. Input controls regulate incoming information. Every sensation picked up by our five senses must be processed by the brain. The input controls decide which of these stimuli are important, what should be allowed to enter consciousness, and how deeply and for how long we focus our concentration. Most importantly for teachers, they determine how new information will be “filed” or hooked to what we already know, and they enable students to take in and use information that does not excite them but needs to be learned. Children who have trouble with input controls are typically highly distractible. They often have trouble concentrating long enough on certain tasks but then spend too much time on other tasks. These outward symptoms tend to get the most attention – no pun intended! The symptoms are often dealt with through medications, without dealing with the underlying mental controls. Children who are diagnosed as ADD or ADHD don’t have trouble paying attention – it’s that they pay attention to everything! The controls haven’t been developed properly or fully. What is often overlooked is that these children tend to have trouble knowing what’s important when they read or listen, or they may have the opposite problem of making too many associations that lead to daydreaming. Still others fail to recognize information that has already been learned. The input controls are not working properly with the amount, pace, and type of information being received. To compensate, they turn their attention to something else and are labeled “distractible.” Once information is processed by the brain, the output controls help the child plan, organize, monitor, and evaluate what is being done. These controls help the student make use of previous experiences, retrieving appropriate information from the brain’s “data bank” to decide what to do with the task at hand. The input and output controls determine how a child “thinks.” A child’s thinking style is part of the learning style. You can view it as a type of filing system that includes how the brain orders information or makes sense out of it, and how the brain retrieves information to use it. It can also be viewed as a desktop. Some people’s desks are uncluttered, free of piles of papers, neat, and orderly. Everything has its place. Other people’s desks are cluttered, with random piles of papers scattered all over in what looks like messy chaos. The person somehow knows what is in each pile, but the search process can take longer. These different organizational or thinking styles influence how efficiently the input and output controls work. Information that matches the way the child thinks is processed more easily while information that does not match the thinking style requires more effort – and attention. Another element of a child’s learning style that influences attention is the preferred sense or modality. Just as each of us has a dominant side that determines whether we are left-handed or right-handed, we all have a dominant sense that we like to use, particularly when learning something new. The preferred sense (or modality) influences what the brain pays attention to. It’s what catches our attention. The teacher may think that a piece of information – such as the times table – is important and warrants the child’s attention. But such unconnected, concrete information isn’t important to abstract, visual learners. Information that is not deemed important enough to trigger attention controls is “dumped” from consciousness. It’s as if the material went in one ear and out the other! Sound familiar? So the first step is to somehow raise the child’s awareness of the information by making it more important. This can be done several ways, either by calling special attention to it, making a dramatic presentation, using games, or using short bursts of activities more frequently. When you know the information you need to present is the opposite of the child’s learning style, then you should already recognize that it’s going to take more work to get the child’s brain to process it. The next question to ask yourself is, “Is it worth the extra effort?” For example, almost every geography program includes learning the states and capitals. This concrete, detailed information is not considered particularly important to global, abstract learners (about 50% of the students). In order to learn this unconnected list of data, these students will need lots of drill and practice, and probably some sort of multi-sensory games or activities to encourage learning. Is it worth the time and effort involved? That depends on your family’s view of education and your particular learning goals. The bottom line is that attention can be learned, or at least improved. Begin by making an attention log. When does the child seem to pay attention? When doesn’t he? What tasks are involved? What type of information are you presenting? What time of day is it? What subject were you doing prior to the breakdown in attention? After a month or so see if you can identify any patterns. Then adjust the presentation of the material or the activity involved accordingly. KEY WORDS: attention, ADD, ADHD |
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"Attention" and "Concentration" are interrelated. Please see the article on "Concentration" in the Archives. |
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