Has a child ever asked you a question that you explained two minutes before? Do your pupils sometimes seem to ignore you when you give instructions? Do they sit staring blankly at you without seeming to take anything in, or constantly fidget and flit from one activity to another without really engaging and persisting at anything? If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Teachers increasingly tell us that they are really struggling to capture and maintain children’s attention, and that it’s both exhausting and frustrating.
Psychologists and neuroscientists used to think of concentration as a “mental muscle”, and carried out tests with children in laboratories to assess how strong it was, comparing scores to decide what constituted normal.
If a child struggled, we thought their attention could be improved with training. But we now know, from lots of more recent research, that this approach to understanding and improving children’s concentration doesn’t really work.
Instead, research suggests that concentration is context-specific. Children can be good at concentrating on some things but not others, and good at concentrating in some settings but not others. Paying attention to a computer program in a lab is nothing like paying attention in real-life situations, so the results of computerised tests don’t transfer well to the classroom.
We also now realise that children’s ability to pay attention isn’t just about the strength of a mental muscle in their brains but, instead, it depends on a variety of factors such as how stressed the child is, how noisy the environment is, how much the activity captures their imagination, and so on.
Improving your pupils’ concentration
So how can you promote focus and attention in your classroom?
Think about visual clutter
Visual information in your classroom (display boards, posters, resources and so on) takes brain resources to process. For young children especially, this can lead to distraction. Studies have shown that too much decoration on the walls leads to off-task behaviour and lower learning outcomes. One study found this to be particularly true for autistic children, another found that if displays cover more than 25 per cent of wall space, children are more likely to be off task.
Sit where your pupils do in the classroom and look at what’s behind you when you’re teaching. Think about how this area can be streamlined to maximise their focus on you instead.
Reduce background noise
Just because you can hear someone’s voice clearly in your classroom, it doesn’t mean that all your pupils can. We are not born with the ability to tune out background noise and tune into one target voice: this skill doesn’t fully develop until children are around 13-14 years old.
More on concentration:
The younger children are, the quieter they need conditions to be in order for them to hear speech clearly. When it seems like a child isn’t paying attention to what you’re saying, often they just can’t hear properly.
Introduce more soft materials and furnishings in your classroom to reduce reverberation (echo), which makes it harder for children to hear speech. Schedule talk-based activities for quieter times, and make an effort to speak with clarity, exaggerating mouth movements, which has been shown to aid comprehension even in noisy settings.
Consider levels of arousal
Children’s level of arousal (how stimulated they are) affects how well they can concentrate. When children are over- or under-stimulated, it is harder for them to pay attention. Signs of under-arousal include daydreaming, being floppy and seeming disinterested. Over-arousal can look like hyper-vigilance, overwhelm or overexcitement.
Children are often quite good at self-regulating their levels of arousal but this can be misinterpreted as disruptive or annoying behaviour. For example, an under-aroused child may fidget, tap, hum or chew to upregulate their arousal and help them focus. An over-aroused child may cover their eyes or ears, disengage in conversation or group work or climb under a table to reduce their levels of arousal, to help them focus.
Observe children’s behaviour during times when attention is poor. Does it seem as if they are seeking more or less stimulation? Can you allow children to move around more, take breaks or seek out more or less stimulating areas/activities to support self-regulation?
Dr Gemma Goldenberg and Professor Sam Wass are the authors of Take Action on Distraction
