Discussion guide – attention

When we say “pay attention,” we often assume students know to what they should pay attention. How can we make this assumed attentional target easier or harder for students to pick up?

what context cues do we provide?
what are distractions in the students’ typical field of view?
how do we help them sort out multi sensory distractions (touch, sound, movement, or even body cues)?
how much work is reasonable for a teacher to do to help students “pay attention,” and how much is the job of the student to buckle down and use self-discipline in this area? What are age definers and when can these safely be disregarded?

Interest tends to direct attention. Do we assume that students will be interested? How do we most effectively pique interest – especially for topics that most students don’t typically find interesting?

How important is our relationship with the student to the task of sharing interests?
Sometimes we all need to learn something despite not being at all interested in it. Are there strategies we can teach that will help with this life skill?
How many opportunities are there in our worlds to craft learning from the student’s interests, rather than the reverse?

When students cannot or will not pay attention, do we have a way of understanding why not prior to assuming it is simply a behavioural choice?

How many reasons besides defiance can you list for a child to not be able to pay attention in a given situation? (Try this as a brainstorming cue for 1 minute)
When paying attention just does not seem possible, is there another option that we can provide a student that will allow for success while we both figure out what is going on?
If the reason for difficulty seems to lie in a student’s personal health or safety or environmental profile, what responsibility remains with us as supporting adults to help that student overcome these barriers?
what accommodations to difficulty with attention could still legitimately grow that student’s skills, options, or stamina in a real worlds setting, which you could provide or control?

Diversity can be described in many ways. How about interest in one’s world as an expression of the uniqueness of each individual? Is the act of paying attention, in its own right, something that can be described, measured, compared, celebrated, and even taught?

When we speak of students as having “attentional difficulties,” are we precise in our description as to what they have attentional difficulties towards, or within what contexts their attention is distracted, and to what distraction?
Is there a way to build on successes, even very small successes, by starting with where a student does show focus, perseverance, and sustained attention, even when it is not where we asked?
can we help students build their abilities to shift, maintain, focus, and sustain attention on less than preferred objects, by changing anything about the environment, the task, or even by providing them with personal strategies? Would this help them in becoming a lifelong learner, rather than simply getting through a particular task?