Question: What strategies are helpful in sustaining attention for individuals who are “naturally scatter-brained”?
Quotation: “Let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting talk and thought” (James, 1899, p. 56).
Connection: As any good school psychologist, James’ chapter on attention naturally led me to think of students with attention disabilities and the various strategies that we use to aid in their learning. We are taught a multitude of methods to use when working with these students and many of these strategies align with the advice provided by James over 100 years ago. These strategies could include using classroom activities that are stimulating across several senses (i.e., visual, auditory, tactile), providing frequent breaks that include physical movement, quick transitions, lessons that are kept abbreviated so as to allow time for review, etc. (Shinn, Walker, & Stoner, 2002). Strategies such as these often help to give students with attention difficulties the opportunity to both stay on task as well as review material that they may have missed by providing frequent shifts in attention whether it is through a different sensory modality, different topic, or different class format. By allowing our mind natural alterations in the focus of attention, we are therefore allowing it to wander in a productive manner.
Outside Connection: The same can be said of all learners in general. As James said, we do not attend to material “without effort”. Last year I attended an orientation for new teaching assistants at the university. We learned a lot about the process of teaching, grading criteria, etc., but one lesson that stuck out in my mind was the idea that for every 15 minutes of instruction provided you should allow 5 minutes of review for the most optimal retention of subject matter. The presenters provided us with some heavy statistics on why this occurs and even gave a mini-lesson on the topic, however, this week’s readings on attention reminded me of this lesson and provided further evidence of James’ point of allowing attention to wander as it naturally does. Although I have no personal experience of teaching, I do know what it is like to be a student and I know that I appreciate the opportunity to review and test my knowledge of the material. This also relates to the New York Times article that was provided to us last week in class of the importance of the retrieval of information to our later retention of that content. Our minds tend to wander, and therefore effective instructors incorporate this knowledge into the structure of the lesson so as to aid in making our shifts in attention relevant to the content we are learning.
References
Shinn, M. A., Walker, H. M., Stoner, G. (2002). Interventions for Academic and Behavior Problems II: Preventative and Remedial Approaches. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologist
I definitely agree with your comments about students with attention difficulties. After working on an initial ADHD evaluation in my practicum site, many of the recommendations that I discussed in the report were ones that James discussed. For example, providing a student with frequent breaks that include physical movement and teaching lessons that are kept abbreviated so as to allow time for review. It is amazing that after all the time that has passed since James wrote his book, that this concept of attention is still the same. In our group online, I asked my group, “What would James would think about the many diagnoses of ADHD that occur in the schools?” Would he say that teachers are not doing the proper things to get the attention? Would he see ADHD as a disability? The new connection that I have is that this chapter really reminded me of ways to adequately give my attention to something. I would like to increase my productivity as much as possible, so therefore this chapter really helped me.
ReplyDeleteNow, that there are so many young students who are being diagnosed with ADD, this chapter on attention is interesting to read on how it was like back 100 years ago and the methods that were used to combat those streams of consciousness. I have recently realized the older I get, the harder it is for me to stay focused, and that is a huge problem. I would think that my attention span should get better the older I get, but that is not always the case. I love the comment you made about the different strategies to use in order to get students paying attention, while still accommodating their continuous wandering minds. I never knew those methods as a substitute teacher for a 7th grade class, and wish I did because they probably would have been helpful. have a nice weekend!
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