How To Help Your Students Concentrate
Whether you’re teaching in classrooms or remotely, gaining your students’ attention is no easy task. When presented with particularly challenging tasks, it’s even more common for students to lose focus. As all supply teachers now, it only takes one student to be distracted before the entire class falls into disarray.
However, there are simple-to-use methods you can employ to help maintain a positive learning environment. To create optimal learning conditions, take a look at these five ways to help your students concentrate:
Change the Classroom Layout
When you’re teaching in school, rather than online, modifying the classroom layout can have a big impact on how children approach your lesson. Sitting in a different part of the room, sharing school tables with different students and even having a different view of the board can trigger a change in behaviour. By using the space to your advantage, you can ensure your students are able to concentrate to the best of their ability.
Look Out for Visual Disturbances
If there are plenty of things in view that will distract your school students, be sure to tidy them away as best you can. It can be tricky to do this when you’re using someone else’s teaching facilities but spending five minutes removing visual disturbances can make your lesson go more smoothly. Turning off screensavers on interactive whiteboards, clearing your desk of clutter, or asking students to leave their bags at the front of the room are simple yet effective ways to minimise distractions.
Take Regular Breaks
Teachers should know that concentrating for long periods of time can be difficult for students of any age. Even an adults’ attention span will begin to wane after around 20 minutes of intense focus, so don’t place unrealistic expectations on your class. Factoring in regular breaks will allow students to decompress before returning to the task at hand. Furthermore, when kids know they have a break coming up, the lesson can seem less overwhelming, which makes them less likely to tune out early on.
Use Different Teaching Methods
As you know, everyone has different learning styles, and you can facilitate optimal learning by using a variety of different teaching methods. Incorporating visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and reading/writing tasks into your lessons will keep students on their toes and ensure there is always something new to be interested in. By alternating between tasks at regular intervals, students have fewer opportunities to become bored or distracted.
Play Memory Games
Memory games require concentration in order to process, retain and recall information, which means they’re a great way to help your students hone their concentration skills. What’s more – they can be used with all age groups. By using your lesson content within games, you can even help your students to commit the information to memory, as well as improving their ability to concentrate.
Keeping Students on Task
Holding your students’ attention can be the trickiest part of being a teacher, so don’t panic if a class appears to be going off track. By employing the above strategies, you can adapt your teaching methodologies to ensure students are able to stay on task and concentrate on the subject matter.
