Students learn best when they are paying attention. Imagine how much your students would learn if all of your students always paid attention to all of your lessons! Inattention is a pervasive problem in schools, so finding a way to reign that in is key to helping your students learn the most.
One key ingredient to getting students to pay attention is to teach well. Have amazing, well-planned, fascinating lessons for every single subject and every single lesson you have to teach. Boom. Done.
What? You already do that, and some kids still don’t seem to catch on? I hate it when that happens. I mean, I was always on my A-game and had multi-sensory, hands-on, multi-media, technology-involved, exciting and engaging lessons that connected with students’ interests and background… complete with realia and uh… unicorns. Yup. Every time. And yet… I still had kids who weren’t paying attention. Ridiculous, I tell you!
But it happens. Even the best planned lessons will lose out to a child who has a secret stash of Pokemon cards in his desk, or to the soccer player who is daydreaming about her game that afternoon. Sometimes, you have to take further action to win their attention… and if you win their attention, it’s a win for everybody! Even if you are an incredibly gifted speaker and have well-planned lessons, you just can’t expect kids to naturally be tuned in all of the time, so here are a few tried and true things you can do to help them!
These are things I do to keep my students paying attention as much as possible. It takes a little training at first, but once they fall into the rhythm of it, it becomes second nature for most of them. And really, doesn’t that sound wonderful? It is. As the teacher, you have a lot of power to mold their expectations and consequently their behavior in class. If you consistently show them that you expect them all to pay attention– and hold them to it– they will learn to pay attention more consistently!
Over the years, I added various strategies to my attention-keeping repertoire. Here are my favorites:
Strategies to keep students paying attention
1. Teach great lessons. The onus is on you to try to make lessons relevant, interesting, and accessible to all of your students. Start here first.
2. Pay attention to your students! I’m sure all of you do this, but… I also know some don’t, so let’s be clear: you have to always read your students! As a teacher, I am always reading my students and gauging their engagement level. Sometimes, if I notice a lag, increasing the engagement level is simply a matter of adjusting my teaching method or style. At other times, I just need to pull something from my bag of tricks (see strategies #3-6) to get everybody back in the game.
Unfortunately, I’ve observed classroom environments where many students are inattentive– chatting on the side, doodling, reading books, cleaning their desks, and/or completely zoning out. Some teachers seem completely oblivious to the lack of engagement. They just keep teaching, their backs turned to their class, unaware or not caring that their students are wilting like parched flowers. If you leave this issue unaddressed, it will result in bored students who entertain themselves with undesirable behaviors. Keeping your students engaged makes teaching more enjoyable, makes learning more enjoyable, and keeps everyone out of trouble! Watch and read your students, and if your lesson really is boring, find a way to change it up. If it’s not, or there’s nothing you can do about it, then consider some other strategies to keep everyone engaged.
3. Don’t do round-robin reading. This is a surefire way to lose a few students along the way. In round-robin reading, students take turns reading in a circle. With this method, kids are usually just focused on which section they’re going to have to read, and they often get so busy counting the paragraphs up until their turn that they miss everything everybody said before them. This does not support reading comprehension! You want them paying attention to the text being read aloud, while also being ready to read their section when it’s their turn. When I’m working through a text with a small group of students for reading, there are a couple methods I use.
- One is to have everybody read at once. Not gonna lie: this one drives me psycho. First of all, it completely ruins the quiet I have going on for the other 25 kids reading independently in the classroom. Secondly, it’s not unusual for one kid to just kinda copy the kid next to him. Thirdly, it’s just craziness. CRAZY. But I saw a teacher I really admire do it once, and it seemed to work for her, so if that works for you, I guess you can give it a shot.
- My preferred method is to randomly call on kids in my reading group. Everyone is following along in the text while one kid reads, and at any point, I will just call on another kid. The next reader is expected to just pick up naturally where the other left off, whether it is mid-page or mid-paragraph, and continue reading. I start off by making it sort of a game, where the goal is to make the reading sound flowy and continuous between readers. Their aim is to be SO ready to be called on that it’s almost like we never switched readers at all. I make a thing about not being “that kid” who gets called on only to respond with, “Huh? What? Wait, where are we?” The kids love it. When we do it “for real,” they are all so eager to be the next reader. I can see their fingers following along, and I can feel their anticipation to be called on next! Sometimes I’ll give one kid a really long portion, and the next a really short one. This keeps ’em on their toes. I try to keep it all even in the end (you know they’re all keeping track!), but they never know when they will be called on. This is an excellent way to keep everybody completely, 100% focused!
- (What I really wish for is a small class so I could work with 1-2 students at a time instead of 3-7 for my “small reading group.” But until that golden day comes, these strategies will have to do!)
4. Don’t rely on raised hands. If you only call on students who are raising their hands, then the hand-raising kids will continue to be engaged, and the disengaged students will not feel a desire or reason to make an effort to reengage. Of course there is a place and time for raised hands, but there is also a place and time to randomly call on students. I’m not a fan of randomly calling on kids just because they’re not paying attention. I’d rather give all of the kids a heads up that they’re all expected to pay attention, and then truly randomly call on students using my handy random name generator. Then everyone is listening, alert, and focused, happy (most of the time) and ready to be called on at any moment. Paying attention? Yes’m!
5. Consequences for not paying attention. Use this one sparingly. It’s not just for anyone who is zoning out for a moment. It’s for the child who is reading a comic book instead of working on his writing. For the child who is flicking erasers at her neighbor instead of… well, anything. For the child who has their back completely turned to you while drawing hearts on their whiteboard as you’re trying to illustrate a science concept. The first step is to call them out on it– “Danielle, pay attention.” If they continue the distracting behavior, then give further consequences. It won’t be long before they learn to give you their full attention all the time (and definitely by the first verbal request!).
6. Have them apologize. “I’m sorry for not paying attention. This is wrong because I’m not learning, and now I’m also holding the class up. In the future I will pay attention. Will you forgive me?” To be honest, I didn’t really want to put this one here. I got a lot of heat for this portion of my post on apologies from several readers… but I still think it’s a good one to keep in your back pocket. Sometimes, a students doesn’t really consider the impact of his inattention on himself or anybody else until he verbally states it. It literally does not cross his mind that he is doing himself a disservice unless he feels the words coming out of his mouth: “This is wrong because I’m not learning.”
It should go without saying that you need to use this one with caution. Consider if the child has special needs (like ADHD), is especially sensitive, is undergoing some extraneous circumstance, etc. You can’t always know everything that’s going on with every kid, but at least take what you do know to make a more informed decision. If it’s a child that is usually on top of things that seems off for the day, I’m not gonna drop this on them. But if someone is caught off guard and gives me the deer-in-headlights look because she was busy sneaking wads of paper into her neighbor’s desk, I’ll ask for the apology.
While most kids will be giving you their full attention (especially if you’re nailing #1 and awesome-teachering it), some kids just don’t make an effort to pay attention unless they know they will be held accountable to it. This is one way to do that.
Some things to keep in mind while keepin ’em on their toes:
- Make the questions easy: If you are going to randomly call on students, make sure the response is one that ANY student would/should feel comfortable answering– how many siblings do you have, what’s your favorite subject, what’s a memory you have from third grade, what book are you reading right now, etc. You want to be careful not to use this to embarrass any of your students, especially those who are already a little low in the self-confidence department. The goal is to keep students engaged– not to single anyone out to make them feel bad. For the reading one (#3) I always have my students in small, leveled reading groups, so I already know that this is text that they are all capable of reading. I would never do this as a whole-class reading activity.
- Sometimes you have to intentionally-randomly call on people. Yes, sometimes I rig the random name generator. A little. I usually try to use it for responses that any student can answer, as described in the bullet point above. However, I also use my teacher discretion to skip over some students if I don’t want to put them on the spot. For example, maybe it’s better not to ask Leo the title of his book if he’s currently a few grade levels behind. Sometimes, I also rig the system to purposely-“randomly” call on someone. Maybe I have a student who usually doesn’t have answers to offer or isn’t known for paying attention. If I see on their face that they would LOVE TO ANSWER, then I will try to game the system in their favor so they have a chance to know what it feels like to be randomly called on and nail it. I love to create moments of victory for my students, which helps build their self-confidence. This is one tool I sometimes use for that purpose!
- Rehearse until they know how it works. Again, you don’t want the kids to be anxious about it. If they know how the system works, that’s one less reason to be anxious and one more thing they feel comfortable and confident about. Whether I am calling on students in a small group for reading or using popsicle sticks, I always start of with super easy material to teach it to them so they are first comfortable with this new procedure. Then, when we really use it for learning new material in class, they have a sense of, “I know how this works, I know how to focus and be ready! I got this! PICK ME PICK ME!” During the random name calling scenarios, I actually feel most of my students being so ready that they are anticipating and hoping to be picked!
If you keep these things in mind, then your students will make a greater effort to stay focused without getting too anxious about the whole thing. You want to provide a healthy sense of anticipation from your students, but don’t want them to be anxious about it.
So there it is. Some of my many strategies to keep students engaged. The main one is to plan well, prepare well, and teach amazing lessons. Always. ;).
If that’s not enough, then consider the other strategies. If you have others to share, as always, I welcome them in the comments below!
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Related:
How to Save Time (and Keep Students Engaged) with Popsicle Sticks
How to Use Consequences Effectively
How Raising Hands Makes Kids Smarter
4 responses to “Keep ‘Em on Their Toes”
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I have to admit I hated round robin reading in the classroom. I read quickly, like, really really quickly (tests in HS put me at approximately 1000 word per minute with a 98% retention, I hate that this comes off as bragging, I’m just giving you an idea of my pace). Anyway, I could read and reread what someone else was reading aloud slowly several times. And I could read ahead, and then reread that. I was so. bloody. bored. Oh my goodness! I’m so glad that wasn’t a regular thing. On the flip side of this, the 20 minute “mandatory reading” time that they implemented to lessen the pressure on the lunchroom was my heaven!!!
Yes. Don’t do it, for the anxious kids, and the bored kids!!!
Agreed, “sustained silent reading” was my favorite “subject” of each school day! =D