Attention and Focus in the Classroom

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I was fascinated by a conversation with my Book Club students on Friday. Many of them implored me to buy print copies of the book, because many of them could spend an entire day engrossed in a novel, but if the novel is on their phones, they said they could not resist the pull of jumping onto an online shopping website or Pintrest!

I have been MIA in this space. This week I was interviewed for two podcasts and I jokingly shared that I blogged at jcasatodd.com, but that was kind of a lie because I haven’t blogged in months. Part of this is because I have been suffering from chronic headaches for months now and it is all I could do at the end of a full teaching day to get through dinner so I can lie down in a dark room so I could prep for the next day and do it all over again. In other ways, I have been feeling overwhelmed, like many of you, by the latent trauma of Covid and what seems like tragedy after tragedy around the world. And I know for a fact, teachers are feeling overwhelmed: I can see it in their eyes and I don’t recall a time we had so many teachers on leave.

I know this latent trauma is affecting the students in front of me. I see it in some of the behaviours. I also know they are happy to be back in person. They tell me so. And for many of them, the returned normalcy of being back at school has been incredible. But have I noticed something else as well? A lessened ability to focus. I suspected as much when I was met with a sea of icons in front of me on a Google Meet? It felt so hard to gauge interest when we were online. How many of my students were on another tab or playing a game? And I have not been able to let go of the conversation with my Book Club Students.

And so, I decided to reflect on when my students have been paying attention and when my kids haven’t…

Not paying attention:
  1. Unstructured work time;
  2. Not all students, but I would say about 20% of them tune out or jump onto their devices during direct instruction;
  3. Watching a film longer than 5 minutes;
  4. While they are waiting for class to start, documents to load;
  5. When students aren’t quite sure what to do and shy to ask.
Paying attention:
  1. Building their own designs in Minecraft: kids are creating sustainable cities in Minecraft. They have to first draft out the city, put it on Flipgrid for feedback and then actually build the city in Minecraft. It’s in these moments that I have seen kids completely immersed.
  2. Post it note pile up: as part of the design thinking process, kids are required to brainstorm climate change problems on post it notes and although there are lots of blank stares, there are no devices in sight.
  3. When instructions are clear and co-constructed.
  4. Playing games: whether it’s playing Wordle or Boggle Fridays, or the variety of board games I provide in the Library, or their own video games, time passes without kids realizing it.

A few ideas I am trying with some success so far.

  1. Use a timer: I find that if students have a timer up for tasks, they tend to stay more focused. My concern with this one is with kids who process at slower speeds than others, so I make sure that I use a timer for things like, “Turn and Talk” or for sharing their ideas about a prompt.
  2. Be explicit about attention and devices. I have three stances for devices which I explicitly share at various moments in a lesson.

a) devices in backpacks for this next part of the lesson

b) make your computer like a taco (so screen lowered but not quite shut)

c) you are welcome to use your device

My favourite question to ask when I walk around the Library when student are on spare is, “Is that device helping you or distracting you right now?” because I really want kids to learn how to self-regulate!

I also think we need to have conversations with kids about the attention economy. How do social media platforms try to get and hold our attention? How to online games do this? In a marketing class, talking about why notifications are red and why auto-play is the default for YouTube and TikTok are important ways we help kids become more aware of their digital wellness habits. Check out this Social Media Test Drive simulation which focuses on this topic here.

3. Choice and voice. Wherever possible, I provide kids with more than one choice about what to view or read based on their interests. This requires a little more prep work, but when kids feel like they have autonomy, they seem to focus more.

4. Practice. Focus and attention are important skills so saying that for the next 1 (or 2 or 3) minutes we are going to try to focus on nothing else except breathing and quiet may help teens to utilize this practice into their own daily routine. Routines and bell-ringers such as daily word games, or math puzzles can be great ways to do this as well. For the next 2 minutes, we are going to brainstorm as many words that have the prefix -anti or prime numbers etc…

This tweet by Nicole Biscotti has also given me pause and a new lens for reflection for this next week:


How much is the lack of focus actually a symptom of so many other factors?

I love this article from John Spencer, Getting Past the Attention Span Myth from a while back which has some really great insights.

Would love to hear some of your ideas!

Stay well.

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