LABCS Weekly Newsletter - 1-6-24

Attention

In Aldous Huxley’s book Island, trained myna birds fly around frequently squawking, "Here and now, here and now!" The author wisely predicted the necessity of having reminders to pay attention, to stay in the moment.

In today’s world there is much to absorb and a great deal of information to process every day. Each day calls to attention detailed facts and complex concepts, family members and friends, projects at work or at school, news items, planning meals, managing the instructions and assignments of several classes or work tasks. It’s no wonder we are sometimes not aware of what is going on right in front of us!

Students with EF struggle to determine the most important information to pay attention to and then use that information as needed. Developing appropriate levels of alertness for attending to a lecture, reading a text book, writing a report, or solving mathematical problems are essential and necessary skills.

Students who effectively control their alertness are able to concentrate without becoming mentally fatigued (especially when sitting still and/or listening for long periods of time) and to pay attention without feeling excessively "bored" or "tired."

Here are some tips for increasing attention:

• Get enough sleep at night - Getting adequate amounts of sleep enables a student to be fully awake and have the mental energy to learn and perform in school. Students who get adequate periods of true sleep fall and stay asleep at night with few, if any, problems. Going to bed at the same time each night and establishing a bed-time routine, starting at dinner or just after dinner will assist in maintaining appropriate levels of alertness throughout the day.
• Develop a state of alertness or readiness for action, similar to getting ready for a kickoff at a football game. Help students do this through the acronym SET. Sit straight, Eyes on teacher, Think about words being said and place an external focus on others to listen to them.
• Learn to develop internal attention - metacognition? How is it going? Am I on track?
• Minimize any distractions such as outside noise, being hungry, thinking about what you need to do in the future.
• Create a Picture and MAKE IT VISUAL!! Visual memories are more effective and are remembered longer!
  • Read the STOP signs and Read the Room
  • Space – Where is it? What are the parts to that space?
  • Time – What time is it now? What usually happens at this time? What is coming up? The task/activity I am doing now, when does it need to be done by? How much time do I have? How long will it take? What can reasonably be accomplished in this amount of time? What is the usual sequence that I do in that amount of time? What is the pace of activity? Can I dilly-dally or do I need to rush?
  • Objects – What materials are in front of me? What materials do I still need? Anything I need to practice?
  • People – Who is around? Who do I need? What are they doing? What is their pace? What is their mood? What is coming up for them?
• Using highlighters, and/or graphics can help to draw attention to important information.
• Examine social relationships in the same way as a new learning situation. Talk aloud about what to attend to in social interactions, e.g., which are most important when forming friendships, dating relationships.
• Take frequent breaks during the day and vary the length of work periods. Use stretching and walking as ways to revitalize your body, getting the blood flowing more evenly throughout the body. Use quiet time to rejuvenate mental energy.
• Adjust seating. Sitting in front of a classroom can facilitate attention and keep distractions from other students to a minimum.
• Become aware of your periods of lower energy; keep a diary or a log of the times during the day when this occurs. Plan on having a healthy energy snack in the afternoon.
• Learn to use textbooks efficiently, for example: how to use the table of contents and the index, how to use the questions at the end of the chapter to guide reading, and how to preview text before reading a chapter (by skimming for key words, dates, and names, looking at pictures for clues to meaning, etc.).
• Provide assistance when mental effort wanes. For example, work together with others as mental energy buddies, or provide jump-starts such as starting one or more math problems, reading the first passage of a text, etc.
• Use special devices, e.g., calculators, word processors, or tape recorders that help stretch mental effort during periods of high output.
• Use a word processing program to develop templates for later use, e.g., a template for getting my homework done, for solving a math word problem, for asking for help in class, etc. Learn to self-monitor your work by evaluating the quality of planning and performance throughout a task.
• Practice making predictions while learning. For example, use prediction charts in reading to help organize predictions and maintain them for later reflection, use story starter activities in writing to contribute the rest of a story based on the beginning, use historical events in social studies to make predictions before learning the actual outcomes, or estimate answers to math problems and science experiments before doing the actual solving.
• Self-monitoring after a task allows a student to think about the effectiveness of a strategy based on a particular outcome, for example thinking about how the amount of studying or planning relates to a high or low grade received on a test.