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Three Virtual Games to Help Students Improve Their Attention in Four Ways

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Three Virtual Games to Help Students Improve Their Attention in Four Ways

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Three Virtual Games to Help Students Improve Their Attention in Four Ways

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Getting young students to focus on class is difficult. But what does paying attention even mean? Find a few basics on each of the four kinds of attention, coupled with tips and virtual activities that can help little learners develop them.

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Whether students are in class or at home, these quick breaks can help them find calm and prime their brains for learning.

The traumatic conditions of isolation, chronic unpredictability, and physical and emotional distance over the past year are affecting everyone, but children and adolescents are experiencing these effects as they are still developing. Toxic levels of stress can wear out their nervous systems, and they find themselves in elevated states of anxiety, depression, and sometimes hopelessness.

Our children and adolescents who appear withdrawn, detached, oppositional, defiant, or aloof may often be exhibiting negative behaviors because they are in pain and are responding as their stress response and nervous system dictates. When we feel threatened or unsafe or when something feels unfamiliar, our response is reactive and reflexive. In such moments, students often don't have the resources to self-regulate.

When students are able to achieve a calm state, they can think clearly, problem-solve, and create stronger memories of what they are learning with increased attention. To help them find that calm, I recommend regulatory activities called focused attention practices, which provide a stimulus that students can focus upon, including deep breaths, sounds, visualizations, movement, rhythm, art, and sometimes taste.

Focused attention practices prepare and prime our brains and bodies to create and hold a state of relaxed alertness. They can calm and/or energize the nervous system. They broaden and deepen our awareness while promoting emotional, social, and cognitive well-being for all students and can be integrated into procedures and routines in our classrooms and schools and students' homes.

10 Focused Attention Practices for Distance and In-Person Learning

1. Fist Pumping: Have students stretch their arms out, palms up, to each side at shoulder height and hold their elbows straight, and then have them open and close their fists with an energizing breath. I have students do this for 30 seconds and then take a long slow deep breath and do it again for 30-60 seconds. Ask students to focus on their movement and breath. Ask them to flip their hands over and open and close their fists again for another minute. This exercise brings an oxygen flow to the brain and strengthens the nervous system.

2. Crossing Movements: Have students make a fist with the thumb inside and raise their arms up and slightly out to each side, making a 60-degree-angle V. They inhale with their arms straight, and bend their elbows to cross their fists in front of their forehead on the exhale. Then they straighten their arms and inhale back into the raised-arms V, and then bend their elbows and cross their fists behind their head. Continue with this powerful breath exercise, which releases calcium deposits in the shoulders and improves blood flow to the brain. This is an energizing movement.

3. Punch and Grab: Have students stand with feet about three feet apart and make fists. One arm at a time, have them reach in front of them, opening their fist on the inhale and closing it and drawing it back to their body on the exhale. They will move back and forth with a powerful inhale and exhale, opening and closing their fists and alternating arms as they pretend to grab something they need. This is much like a boxing movement with one arm at a time, at any speed that feels comfortable.

4. Blossoming Flower: With the fingertips of both hands touching, students begin by opening their thumbs with a deep inhale and then exhale; as they continue to breathe, they open their forefingers, then middle fingers, the ring fingers; when they come to the pinkies, they pull their hands apart and take the biggest breath as their flowers bloom. As they open each pair of fingers, you can also ask them to say an affirmative sentence such as "I am peaceful," "I am strong," "I am ready," or "I am getting there."

5. Frog Breaths: Standing up with their heels touching and toes pointed out, have students squat down and touch the floor with their fingertips. They should inhale when they stand, and exhale when they squat. Aim for 20 repetitions. This exercise energizes students and strengthens the nervous system.

6. Balancing the Plate: Have students balance a light object such as a paper plate or cup, or even a book, on their heads and hold a variety of poses. They can try balancing on one leg, squatting down, walking, or bending forward as they steady their heads and seeing how low they can bend and still keep the object on their heads. You can try coming up with new poses with students.

7. Dedicate This One: Have students create an image or write down a few words that they want to share with someone they appreciate. As they think of the person, they should breathe deeply for one minute, mentally expressing their love and their image or words with the thought of this person.

8. Give Me Yours, and I'll Give You Mine: Have students write down or draw a worry or concern they have and then fold up the paper and hand it to a friend. As they share their worries, have them breathe together for one minute, breathing in strength and love and breathing out this strength and love to their friend. Whether they share the worry is a choice; if you want students to share these with one another and with the class, you will need to set guidelines and agreements for everyone.

9. Vision Quest: Have students focus on one specific object in the room or within the setting where they are. After focusing their attention for 30 seconds, have them broaden their gaze and create a gentler, more open vision of their setting. When they do this, their heart rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure will lower.

10. Reveal: Bring an object to Zoom or the classroom that is covered with a towel or cloth. Hold the covered object with just a small part being revealed in front of the students, and with every deep breath they take, you slowly peel back the cloth, revealing a bit more of the object. After a few deep breaths, they should now see enough to begin guessing in the chat box or by calling out. You can ask how the object is related to your content or to social and emotional learning.

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Whether students are in class or at home, these quick breaks can help them find calm and prime their brains for learning.

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Tools to Boost Students' Reading Stamina

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Tools to Boost Students' Reading Stamina

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Getting students to read independently for long periods of time has never been easy. Now, with devices designed to sap their attention sitting in their pockets, the challenge has become even greater.

A new survey by Ed Week found that more than half of teachers in grades 3-8 report their students' reading stamina has "declined precipitously" in recent years. The findings line up with a 2014 meta-analysis, which concluded that for many U.S. students, the stamina required to sustain their attention during independent reading and "interact with texts in a meaningful manner" is waning.

While some argue students should be developing their reading stamina at home-and teachers should be using their valuable class time on other priorities-the best-selling author and former educator Doug Lemov told Ed Week that kids need consistent practice in school to sharpen these muscles. "Should there be reading at home? Yeah, probably," he conceded, "but we should also read consistently in class, because that's when I can wire their habits for sustained attention."

When we turned to ask educators in our audience how they go about improving students' reading stamina, many agreed with Lemov, saying that step one is building up the amount of daily independent reading time students receive.

As you build up students' stamina, consider trying out some of the following approaches to ensure you're setting students up for success-and that they're getting the most out of the texts they're reading.

A Little Experiment to Surface Distractions

To improve students' attention spans, try calling their, well... attention to the issue. Neurologist, researcher, and classroom teacher Judy Willis writes that this could look like a self-awareness activity that helps students shatter the myth of multitasking and makes it clear just how much of their time and attention distractions consume.

First, ask students to make a list of all the potential distractions that come up for them as they read. These will likely include: cell phones, the internet, TV, and video games. Next, assign students a task to complete-like reading 10 or 15 pages of a novel-and ask them to do it one night with their main distractions available to them, and another night when their distractions are not available.

Students can then compare and contrast how much time it takes them to complete the task in each instance, and bring the differences they notice to class for a larger discussion. "After gathering and evaluating their data, students will no doubt find evidence showing which multitasking distractions waste time and diminish success," says Willis. "Most kids believe they can have it all by multitasking. The fallacy is that when combining these activities with homework, they are getting less done, not more."

The activity can also be used as justification for keeping your classroom clear of similar distractions, and for drilling down on the importance of rebuilding your students' attention span through frequent periods of sustained reading time.

Incremental Practice

Knowing you have to assign students more independent reading time is one thing, but doing it should be less like flipping a switch and more like developing a new exercise routine, writes educator Marile Mariana Stoneburg on Facebook. Stoneburg said that it's important to "start small, start easy" and "alternate between increasing rigor and increasing time."

Seventh grade teacher Katherine Marie wrote that she starts with 10 minutes of independent reading time, then builds up to 20 and eventually 30 minutes. Providing students with books they're interested in, or the ability to choose what they read at times, goes a long way toward building-and solidifying-their endurance, according to Marie. "They build their reading stamina with books they choose and love," she said. "Then when they have to dive into harder texts they don't get to choose, that built up stamina is there to fall back on!"

Educator Megan Reznicek Kersey adds that fun games help motivate her students to read for longer periods. Kersey's seventh grade ELA students play "Game of Quotes," during which they engage in silent reading-"start with a few minutes, build up to 20"-and then answer silly questions with lines from the book they've been reading.

Questions include: "What's the last thing a bug says before hitting the windshield?" or "What's something written on a note you wouldn't want your teacher to confiscate?" Students must search through the pages they've just read to find "funny, relevant" responses. Knowing they'll have to go on this hunt, Kersey said, incentivizes them to read more: "The more they've read, the more they have to choose from."

Chunk Material into Manageable Bites

Assigning students 20 minutes of classroom reading without building up their stamina will likely result in a good deal of closed eyes and (clandestine) cell phone scrolling.

Lemov told Ed Week that teachers can quickly build up to 20 or more minutes of uninterrupted reading time by breaking the time into smaller, consecutive tasks: Teacher read-alouds, student read-alouds in pairs, and silent reading on the same shared text, for example.

This "reading-cycle" might look like teachers reading the first few paragraphs of a text, students around the room taking on a few paragraphs of their own outloud, and a final period where students finish reading for a set time silently. At the end, Lemov assigns a brief period of writing and or discussion of the text. "It's a sustained section of text, and we are practicing sustaining attention on it, with no break, for 20 minutes," he told Ed Week.

High school social studies teacher Monique Anne says she takes a similar approach by applying the jigsaw method to sections of longer non-fiction texts. For example: Try asking students to take on smaller sections of a text (say, a few paragraphs) and work collaboratively to understand and explain its meaning to peers in a larger discussion about the text's substance.

Anne told Edutopia that after using this strategy with students she transitions from shorter texts to whole texts in class, on their own: "they can hang in there for about 25-30 minutes," she wrote, "I'm calling it a win!"

Breathing Exercises

One educator who teaches language learners recommended trying out breathing practice and similar mindfulness exercises before sustained reading practice, which can "release stress and increase concentration."

Aukeem Ballard, a dean of students and former history teacher in California, said he incorporated mindfulness activities into each of his classrooms at least once a week. Even as little as five minutes, he told Edutopia, helped students boost working memory and tune out distractions-benefits that bode well for improved reading stamina.

A simple activity Ballard used was asking students to put their feet flat on the ground, close their eyes, and take deep breaths-in and out. "I guide students to follow where the air from their breath goes," Ballard said. "While students are focusing on their breath, I invite them to reflect." This reflection could be on the reading they're about to engage in, a theme they've been discussing in class, or anything else.

Ballard invites students to spend another minute "having everyone, including myself, focus on how we're showing up to the space." Some students, Ballard said, might show up angry to class, or stressed because of their school work. "We always make sure to validate how we are showing up without judgment toward ourselves."

To help students take the exercise seriously, Ballard found it useful to point students toward a list of research-backed benefits to mindfulness activities, including improved cognitive flexibility, reduced emotional reactivity, and reduced rumination on unwanted thoughts. "It is not strictly meditation, but rather a practice in supporting your mind to take care of yourself," Ballard told students.

Check for Understanding

To ensure students are grasping the meaning of what they're reading while they're building up their stamina-and not just staring at words on the page-quick checks for understanding can be useful.

Literacy expert and researcher Timothy Shanahan told Ed Week that short quizzes right after a sustained period of reading on a shared text can help teachers gauge how well students were able to make sense of the passages, and provide clues about further supports teachers might need to add, such as vocabulary review or discussions about narrative structure or sequencing. "If you have a six-page article about something in the Civil War, for instance, have them read the six pages and then instead of doing some activity right away, quiz them-find out how well they did," Shanahan told Ed Week.

Do the quiz results show that they have "a better understanding about what happened earlier in the article?" Did their comprehension trail off as they continued to interact with the text? "Maybe they weren't reading as carefully or maybe they didn't know how to use that information and the second part just got harder," Shanahan said.

A short quiz could include a few basic questions about plot, characters, key details, or dates, for example, and they don't have to be graded.

High school history teacher Benjamin Barbour told Edutopia that he likes to mix-in short written assessments to check for understanding, even as short as a sentence or two. "When students decipher concepts simply and succinctly, they're primed to contemplate what they read at a deeper level," Barbour said. "Summarizing, for instance, obliges them to read the text several times, identify key concepts and main points, and decode complex passages."

His insights line up with a body of research which finds that when students summarize what they've just read-in their own words, and without the help of a text at their side-it helps them better integrate new information into their existing knowledge base.

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Tools to Boost Students' Reading Stamina

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Try these strategies to help your students sustain their focus on reading for longer periods of time, and drive comprehension in the process.

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ATTENTION: Basics | Difficulties | Responses

Basics of Attention
Paying attention refers to the brain's ability to take all of the stimuli around us, immediately categorize and organize information as relevant or irrelevant, and focus the mind on one thing. For a child in a classroom, paying attention to the teacher means filtering out as many as 30 other students and the dynamics between them, visual or outside distractions, noises, and more.

The psychological and medical communities as a whole have accepted a set of criteria for diagnosing chronic attention problems, and have grouped these problems under the name Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, this term and its use in diagnosis remains controversial, and the approaches to attention problems are varied (see Up Close, Does ADHD Exist?).

This diversity of views comes in part from the fact that although paying attention may seem like an isolated task, it is an elaborate neurocognitive process. Consider everything that is stimulating your senses as you read this sentence. Perhaps there are background noises or a conversation nearby, the aromas of food or pangs of hunger, distractions in your peripheral vision, thoughts of things to do, recent conversations or events still fresh in your mind. Now consider another setting: listening to a class lecture or watching a film. Everyone has experienced a lapse in attention in such settings from time to time. But what if paying attention were a chronic challenge? For some students it is, and they are unable to focus no matter how hard they try.

Try it yourself. Experience a visual distraction.

People with chronic attention problems describe their world as a cacophony of distractions, with no sound or image necessarily more important than any others. Ambient sounds -- papers rustling, pencils tapping -- demand as much attention as a set of verbal instructions.

Try it yourself. Experience an auditory distraction.

"Attention deficit" is one of the most widely used phrases when it comes to learning problems, but it may also be one of the most common misdiagnoses. Although there is much information about ADHD available to schools, focusing on attention deficit may be causing parents and teachers to overlook other learning problems. Dr. David Urion, Director of Neurology and Learning Disabilities at Children's Hospital in Boston, suggests that parents and teachers look closely at any inconsistencies. If a child has trouble paying attention or focusing in one subject area, but not all subjects, a lack of attention may be the symptom of a different learning problem. Only a small percentage of children with learning problems have a neurocognitive breakdown in attention.

If your child's attention problems tend to be in one of the following subject areas, visit that section of the site:

> Reading
> Writing
> Mathematics

Lauren's father, Mike Smith, questions medicating his daughter in order to help her focus.

"Being a parent, any foreign substance like a drug scares the hell out of me. Taking it as an adult, I wouldn't see an issue. But something with my baby girl, no. Even though I've read about it and I understand what it's supposed to do and Doctor Baker has gone through what the benefits are and he's described basically no side effects -- still, to me, it's somewhat of an unknown, and maybe it's just my ignorance but it's somewhat terrifying for me."

Dr. Edward Hallowell on Ritalin as a way to manage attention deficit

"Is it a cure? Absolutely not. But you learn compensatory strategies, habits while you're taking the medication that will carry over to when you're not taking the medication. So by allowing you to focus better, it allows you to better learn these strategies that we're trying to teach them. It just makes intuitive sense. If you turn up the lights in the room you can learn better than trying to learn in the dark."

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Misunderstood Minds . Attention Basics | PBS

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ATTENTION : Basics | Difficulties | Responses Paying attention refers to the brain's ability to take all of the stimuli around us, immediately categorize and organize information as relevant or irrelevant, and focus the mind on one thing.

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Cognitive Neuroscience of Sustained Attention and Classical Mindfulness

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Cognitive Neuroscience of Sustained Attention and Classical Mindfulness

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The Cognitive Neuroscience of Sustained Attention and Classical Mindfulness:  Volume 1

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Games to Help Students Develop their Capacity for Attention

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Games to Help Students Develop their Capacity for Attention

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The Games

Here are five simple games you can play with your child to build visual- and auditory-attention skills.

The games are designed to improve your child's attentional processes by being more specific than other attentional tasks. They may also reveal information that could be helpful in other situations, such as your child's classroom. However, these games are not intended to provide a "treatment program." Attentional disorders are far too complex to be addressed by game-like tools.

What You Need

Three decks of ordinary playing cards

A stopwatch

A dual-cassette tape recorder (or two recorders)

Two blank audiocassette tapes

Six 3 x 5 index cards

Print out: Recording sheets, progress charts, and directions
Rules to Play By:

First, try playing these games with another adult. This way, you will be comfortable with the rules and scoring when you play them with your child.

Not all kids will be able to do all the games. There's no specific age-range for these games. Play only those games that are developmentally appropriate for your child.

Let your child be the guide. Don't force him to continue if the task is too difficult. Play only those games that your child easily understands and is willing to play.

Praise your child's participation and improvements. Even though his performance may be inconsistent, always tell him when he has done better. For example, "You did much better on that game than the last time we played it." Avoid giving negative comments and keep it fun.

If you have ADHD or find yourself confused by, or having difficulty with, some of the game formats, do not play these games with your child. You don't want him to have distorted feedback on his performance because of your own errors. Find someone who doesn't have ADHD to play with your child, like his teacher, school guidance counselor, or a family friend.

Be sure to record your child's performance and then come again to see how your child improves.

To increase the difficulty level, you can:
1. Increase the duration of the game from one minute to two minutes. A maximum of five minutes should be imposed on all games.
2. Play an additional tape in the background of noise from either a typical classroom or a playground.

Focused Attention
Visual
1. Take three decks of cards, remove the jokers, and shuffle them.
2. Deal single cards, piling them in a stack face up so that your child simply has to focus on the top of the stack to name the color.
3. Place the cards at a rate of one per second (for those needing to practice their timing in putting the cards down, remember the traditional way of counting: One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, etc.).
4. Instruct your child to make a mark in the appropriate place on the recording sheet as soon as a red card comes up.

5. Set the timer for one minute and stop when the bell rings.
6. To figure out the number of correct responses go back through the cards and count the total number of red cards presented until the timer rang. Write the score on the recording sheet. To calculate the percentage correct, divide the number of red cards marked by the total number of red cards presented. Mark it on the performance record.

Auditory

1. Pre-record for exactly one minute a random series of the words "red" and "black" on the tape. To do this, shuffle the three decks and read the color of the cards as you put them down, again at the rate of one per second.
2. Now play this recording to your child and instruct him to put a mark on the recording sheet every time he hears the word "red."
3. Again, you can then count the total number of correct picks (subtract errors for those marked incorrectly) by knowing how many times you said the word "red" on the tape. Calculate a percentage of correct responses.
It should be obvious that this first game is very easy and few children should have trouble with it. However, children with severe attentional impairments may find this game difficult, and others may be challenged when the length of the game is increased.

Sustained Attention Visual

1. Use three decks of well-shuffled cards.
2. Tell your child to mark the recording sheet each time she sees a red card that comes right after a black card.
3. Place the cards face up in a pile as you deal them at the rate of one per second for one minute.
4. Count the number of errors and subtract this number from the total marks to get the number correct. You can also calculate a percentage.

Auditory

1. Make a tape similar to (but different from) the one used in Focused Attention (Auditory) Game, since your child may be familiar with that first tape.
2. For one minute, play the tape for your child.
3. Tell your child to mark the recording sheet every time she hears the word "red" following, or coming right after, the word "black."
4. Subtract errors from the total marks to get the number correct and the percentage of correct responses over the one-minute period.

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Here are five simple games you can play with your child to build visual- and auditory-attention skills. The games are designed to improve your child's attentional processes by being more specific than other attentional tasks. They may also reveal information that could be helpful in other situations, such as your child's classroom.

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Executive Functions of the Brain: Sustained Attention

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Executive Functions of the Brain: Sustained Attention

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Sustained attention, or the ability to stay focused on a task, is an executive function that people seem to, well... focus on!

Adult clients tell me that they need to improve their focus at work. Teachers complain about students who don't focus in class. Everyone is looking for the magic wand to fix this frustrating problem. Alas, there is no magic wand.

Lack of sustained attention is frustrating because the ability to focus is very complex. It is tied to so many aspects of the brain and environment.

For those with ADHD, a chemically under-activated brain is one source of the lack of focus. That's why stimulant medications can be helpful. Medication can make it easier to sustain attention, but doesn't necessarily solve issues of starting and staying on task, especially when there is resistance to doing the task.

Working Memory and Task Initiation

My personal challenge with staying focused and on task is tied to my poor working memory. If a task pops into my mind or sight that I don't want to forget, I will want to switch tasks immediately so that I don't lose the thought.

The environment we work and live in can also make sustained attention very difficult. Our digital devices are full of potential distractions - very appealing when we want to avoid a task!

Interruptions from other people, at work, school and home can undermine the best of intentions to stay on task. And the states of our physical body and emotional brain also impact focus.

Inadequate sleep and lack of food at appropriate times diminish all of our executive functions including sustained attention. The same applies to experiencing an illness. I am just recovering from a cold virus during which I could not maintain focus on much of anything. If you are in a time of emotional stress, sustained focus will suffer.

Tips for Improving Focus and Working Memory

While there is no magic wand to ensure sustained attention, it can be improved. You can start by analyzing the situations where focus is difficult. What can you begin to change?

Manage Sustained Attention Through Brain Chemistry

Medication: Many brains with ADHD positively respond to stimulant medications. The book: ADHD 2.0 by Hallowell and Ratey has an excellent section on medications. The websites for CHADD and ADDitude Magazine are also good reference sources for information on ADHD medications.

Sleep: Take an honest look at your sleep hygiene. How can you improve it?

Nutrition: Are you skipping meals? Living on junk food and excessive carbohydrates? How can you improve your eating habits?

Emotional stress: Get help with problem-solving. Seek out counseling. What are your major stressors? Pick one and analyze what needs to be adjusted. Consider meditation and yoga classes. Set up walk and talks with a friend who is a positive person to be around.

Exercise: Exercise changes your brain chemistry and can help focus. If you aren't exercising, then reframe/rethink exercise. What your body and brain need is MOVEMENT. What kind of movement are you willing to add to your week? Start small and celebrate any movement!

Ways to Limit Digital Distractions to Boost Sustained Attention

Declutter: Clean up your phone's home screen and your computer desktop. Turn off notifications. Move tempting apps to the second screen. Consider getting rid of some.

Silence notifications: When you need to work in a focused manner, put your phone on silent and move it out of your sight and reach.

Set personal limitations: Decide when you will be on your phone and when you need to put it in "phone jail" for a bit. Check out Internet Blockers if you just can't say no to tempting sites. You can set blocks for periods of time when you need to focus while on a computer.

Ways to Limit "People Distractions"

Set boundaries both at work and home. If you need uninterrupted desk time, set up a system that communicates at a glance that you do not want to be disturbed. My clients have successfully used color-coded cards to hang on office doors or chairs. Green means I am open to interruptions. Red means do not disturb.

Get Lost: Find a location where you are out of sight. People find all kinds of creative hiding spots in coffee shops, empty meeting rooms, and even their cars.

Finding Motivation for Undesirable Tasks

Mindset: Change your mindset from completion to making progress.

Work smarter, not harder: Analyze when your brain works most efficiently and tackle harder tasks during those hours.

Stay curious: Collect data on how long your brain can typically focus. Work for that period setting a timer for a 5-minute brain break. Then return to the task to make more progress.

Positive reinforcement: Celebrate ALL of your progress, no matter how small. Celebration changes your brain chemistry and sustains motivation.

Physical Environment: The disorder of your work/home space can be highly distracting. Taking time to keep your space tidy can be extremely helpful. This falls under the executive function category of Organization - a topic for another blog!

In the meantime, beware of how complicated it is to support sustained attention. It will ebb and flow in response to all of the issues above. No brain can be "on" all the time. Be kind to yourself. Start small. Identify one or two areas where you can make change to support your focus.

Then, CELEBRATE! You can do this. Then tackle another small achievable change to help yourself. We can all make changes to improve our executive functioning. I can do it. I've seen hundreds of others do it too.

Little by little, change happens.

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12 Executive Functions of the Brain Spotlight: #7: Sustained Attention - Executive Functioning Success

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Sustained attention, or the ability to stay focused on a task, is an executive function that people seem to, well... focus on! Adult clients tell me that they need to improve their focus at work. Teachers complain about students who don't focus in class. Everyone is looking for the magic wand to fix this frustrating [...]

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Teaching Students With ADHD to F.O.C.U.S: A Learning Strategy

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Teaching Students With ADHD to F.O.C.U.S: A Learning Strategy

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ATTENTION: Basics | Difficulties | Responses

Difficulties with Attention
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), a standard reference source published by the American Psychiatric Association, there are three patterns of behavior that indicate ADHD: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity (difficulty controlling one's actions). Signs of inattention as outlined in the DSM-IV include

becoming easily distracted by irrelevant sights and sounds

failing to pay attention to details and making careless mistakes

rarely following instructions carefully and completely

losing or forgetting things like toys, or pencils, books, and tools needed for a task

Signs of hyperactivity and impulsivity are

feeling restless, often fidgeting with hands or feet, or squirming

running, climbing, or leaving a seat in situations where sitting or quiet behavior is expected

blurting out answers before hearing the whole question

having difficulty waiting in line or for a turn

Because everyone shows some of these behaviors at times, the DSM-IV contains very specific guidelines for determining when they indicate ADHD. The behaviors must appear early in life, before age 7, and continue for at least six months. In children, they must be more frequent or severe than in others the same age. Above all, the behaviors must create a real handicap in at least two areas of a person's life, such as school, home, work, or social settings. A child with some attention problems but whose school work or friendships are not impaired by these behaviors would not be diagnosed with ADHD. Nor would a child who seems overly active at school but functions well elsewhere.

Proper diagnosis offers some insight into what a child may be experiencing and helps direct parents and teachers to appropriate responses. Dr. Mel Levine and other researchers are developing an understanding of how brain function contributes to attention, and what interventions may work for some students. Dr. Levine views attention as consisting of three control systems: mental energy, processing, and production. Some children experience problems with all of these attention systems, while others may show strengths and weaknesses in different systems.

Attention Control Systems

Mental Energy
The first attention control system, mental energy, regulates and distributes the energy supply needed for the brain to take in and interpret information and regulate behavior. Children whose mental energy is not working effectively may become mentally fatigued when they try to concentrate, or have other problems related to maintaining the brain energy needed for optimal learning and behavior.

There are four mental energy controls. The first is alertness, a state of mind in which a child can effectively listen to and watch information being presented. Children who experience difficulty with alertness can appear to be daydreaming.

The second mental energy control is sleep and arousal balance. This control affects the ability to sleep well enough at night to be sufficiently alert during the day. Children who are experiencing trouble with sleep and arousal may find it difficult to get to sleep at night, or they may sleep poorly. They then have trouble getting up in the morning and may appear tired in class.

The third mental energy control is mental effort. This control initiates and maintains the flow of energy required for a child to start, work on, and complete a task. Mental effort is particularly important when children are faced with tasks that may not be especially interesting or personally motivating. Children who have difficulty with mental effort can benefit from having tasks broken down into smaller, more manageable parts.

The fourth mental energy control is performance consistency. It works to ensure a reliable, predictable flow of energy from moment to moment and day to day. Children who have trouble with performance consistency don't have problems all of the time. Sometimes they can concentrate and perform well, while other times they cannot. Their work output and behavior may be impossible to predict.

Processing
The second attention control system is called processing. This system helps a child select, prepare, and begin to interpret incoming information. Children who have difficulty with processing may have a range of problems related to regulating the use of incoming information.

There are five processing controls. The first is saliency determination. It involves selecting which incoming information is the most important. Children who have difficulty with this control may be distracted by things that aren't relevant and miss important information being presented.

The second processing control is depth and detail of processing. It controls how intensely children can concentrate on highly specific data. It enables them to focus deeply enough to recognize and remember necessary details.

The third processing control is cognitive activation. This active processing connects new information to what has already been learned through prior knowledge and experience. Children who are inactive processors are unable to connect to prior knowledge to assist their understanding of new information. In contrast, overactive processors are reminded of too much prior knowledge, making it difficult for them to maintain focus.

The fourth processing control is focal maintenance. This allows a child to focus on important information for the appropriate period of time. As Dr. Levine explains, "It isn't so much how long your attention span is, as it is how well-matched the duration of your attention is to the target at hand." Some children who don't concentrate long enough on certain things may concentrate too long on others.

The fifth and final processing control is satisfaction control. This control involves a child's ability to allocate enough attention to activities or topics of moderate or low levels of interest. "Insatiable" is a term used for children with poor satisfaction control who may be unable to concentrate on activities that are not exciting enough.

Production
The third attention control system is production. This area governs output -- including what children generate academically, behaviorally, and socially. Children with production control problems have a range of difficulties related to regulating academic and behavioral output. They may do things too quickly without thinking, planning, or previewing outcomes.

There are five production controls. The first is previewing. It involves considering more than one action or response and anticipating the likely outcome of a particular choice. Children who have difficulty with previewing may plunge into activities instantly and react too quickly.

The second production control is facilitation and inhibition. This is the ability to exercise restraint and not act immediately, to consider multiple options, and to choose the best one before acting or starting on a task. Children who have trouble with facilitation and inhibition frequently act impulsively and may appear to be doing only the first thing that comes to mind. These children may blurt out answers before being called upon in class.

The third production control is pacing, which means doing tasks or activities at the most appropriate speed. Pacing difficulties often show up in children's reading. Their reading pace may be so fast that they skip over words, have difficulty with multisyllable words, and show little reading comprehension.

The fourth production control is self-monitoring. It allows children to evaluate how they are doing while performing and after completing a task. This control allows children to regulate their attention and take corrective action.

The fifth production control is reinforceability. It allows children to use previous experience to guide current behavior and approaches to current tasks. Often called hindsight, this ability enables children to make use of precedent, experience, and prior knowledge to guide their decision making and actions.

Cause
Although scientists still know very little about the cause of ADHD, research suggests the disorder is biologically based. This means that there are likely chemical and/or structural problems in the brains of people with ADHD that inhibit their ability to focus, plan ahead, finish tasks, and so on.

Studies have shown significant structural and functional differences in the brains of children with ADHD relative to the brains of children who are progressing normally. One such study found several brain regions (prefrontal cortex, striatum, basal ganglia, and cerebellum) of children with ADHD to be significantly smaller than the same regions in children without ADHD.

Similarly, a study found that children with ADHD had much lower activity levels in areas of the brain that control attention, social judgment, and movement relative to non-ADHD kids. These decreased activity levels may be the result of structural problems in the brain -- connections that just don't exist -- or they may originate in chemical differences between ADHD children and non-ADHD children.

The neurotransmitter dopamine is an important brain chemical that has been linked to ADHD. A kind of chemical messenger, dopamine is thought to facilitate critical brain functions, including the ability to pay attention. In people with ADHD, researchers have found that receptors in the brain that normally respond to dopamine fail to work properly -- either because the brain is not producing enough dopamine or because it is reabsorbing the chemical too readily. Many researchers believe stimulant drugs like Ritalin work by making more dopamine available. Read about the medication debate.

Unfortunately, there is still much that remains a mystery. While researchers have identified chemical and structural differences between children with ADHD and non-ADHD kids, they are no closer to understanding what may cause these differences. Current research is focusing on environmental toxins, drugs, and genetic factors as possible causes of ADHD.

Given this uncertainty, the debate about how best to manage attention problems is not surprising. Although there is clear evidence that some children have benefited from drugs like Ritalin, for others, this may not be an appropriate response.

Signs of Attention Problems
A common misconception about children with attention problems is that they aren't paying attention at all. But children who struggle with attention may actually pay attention to everything; their difficulty is deciding what to focus on and maintaining that focus. And since attention is a complex neurocognitive process, there are several areas where signs of struggle appear.
Mental Energy
A student:

has difficulty concentrating; may complain of feeling tired or bored

does not seem to be well rested and fully awake during the day

has inconsistent work patterns that negatively impact quality and quantity of work

shows overactivity and fidgets -- especially pronounced when sitting and listening

Processing
A student:

processes too little or too much information; can't distinguish between what is important and what isn't

focuses too superficially or too deeply on information presented

has difficulty connecting new information with information already known

only pays attention to exciting information or highly stimulating activities

focuses for too brief a period

has problems shifting focus from one subject or activity to another

Try it yourself. Experience an auditory distraction.

Production
A student:

fails to preview the effects of statements or actions or to predict the outcomes of tasks or activities

has difficulty coming up with the right strategy or technique to accomplish a task

does not monitor quality of work or the effectiveness of strategies

does not use past successes and failures to guide current behavior, actions, or strategies

is apt to do too many things too quickly and some other things too slowly

has a poor sense of how time and how to manage it

If any of these signs occur inconsistently or in a particular subject area, they may be pointing to a different learning problem. When children struggle with reading, for example, because of a neurological breakdown that hinders their decoding ability, it is very difficult for them to concentrate and stay focused.

A controversial diagnosis

This question has nearly as many answers as there are people willing to voice an opinion on the subject. There has never been a consensus about the validity of the ADHD diagnosis in large part because researchers had, until recently at least, found no evidence of a biological cause. The question is further confounded by the fact that the criteria doctors use to diagnose the disorder are common behaviors that nearly all of us have demonstrated at some point: failing to pay attention to details, having difficulty waiting in line, and so on. See the essay to the left for more detail on diagnosis.

One view embraced by some neurologists, psychiatrists, and teachers asserts that there is no fundamental difference between people who regularly struggle with attention and those who can focus easily whenever they need to -- that any variation is only a matter of degree. These critics argue that scientific research has not uncovered a legitimate biological cause of the behaviors the American Psychiatric Association uses to define ADHD. They say the differences researchers have uncovered recently between people diagnosed with ADHD and people without are simply differences among people and not the causes of a disorder. ADHD-like behavioral problems, they argue, result instead from social factors, possibly including deficiencies in the parenting and education a child receives.

In contrast to this view, the majority of medical and psychiatric professionals accept that ADHD is a neurobiological disorder, meaning that the condition is caused by an abnormality in the brain -- either structural, or chemical, or both. They say the differences in diagnostic test results between someone with ADHD and someone without are measurable -- and significant. And, according to many ADHD researchers, their assertion of a likely biological cause is increasingly supported by brain research. Neuroscientists have found that, in general, certain areas of the brain are smaller in people with ADHD than in people without it, and their brains also produce smaller amounts of an important neurotransmitter.

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Misunderstood Minds . Attention Difficulties | PBS

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ATTENTION : Basics | Difficulties | Responses According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), a standard reference source published by the American Psychiatric Association, there are three patterns of behavior that indicate ADHD: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity (difficulty controlling one's actions).

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Strategies for Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functions

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Strategies for Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functions

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Earlier in Donna's career as a teacher and school psychologist, she assessed, diagnosed, and helped to create interventions for children and youth who had difficulty with their executive functioning. Today as teacher educators, we are pleased that our graduates are increasing students' cognitive, metacognitive, and executive functioning in classrooms around the world (as just one example, Texas teacher Diane Dahl blogs on teaching metacognition).

What Are Executive Functions?

Through explicit instruction and modeling, students can come to recognize the importance of taking charge of their executive functioning in their academic endeavors and later in their careers.

Executive functions can be defined as the awareness and directive capacities of the mind. By wielding these skills and abilities, students decide where to focus their attention and which tasks to undertake. As a general rule of thumb, when students of any age have difficulty completing developmentally appropriate academic tasks on their own, executive functioning may be at the root of the problem.

In the human brain, executive functions are primarily regulated by the prefrontal regions (just behind the forehead) of the frontal lobes. Neuroscientists and psychologists have made significant gains in understanding the brain's executive functioning over the past several decades.

An appropriate metaphor that often helps students and educators alike understand the role of executive functioning in thinking and behavior is to imagine an orchestra conductor. The conductor chooses what work the orchestra will perform, decides how to interpret that work, sets the tempo for the performance, and directs each section of musicians to contribute at the appropriate time. In the same way, executive functioning allows us to:

1. Activate awareness

2. Self-regulate by cueing, directing, and coordinating the various cognitive skills necessary for moment-to-moment functioning

3. Establish goals and make long-term plans

4. Maintain a self-image of being in charge of our learning and actions

Students can and should be taught to develop their executive functioning as a path to self-directed learning and self-determined living.

Making Connections

We have found that educators today are more interested than ever in teaching students to wield powerful learning and thinking tools. In other blog posts and articles we have written with Edutopia and elsewhere, we have shared popular, practical strategies for increasing students' executive functioning by teaching them how and when to employ cognitive assets, metacognition, working memory, and selective attention. All of these learning tools come together under the umbrella of executive functioning.

Incorporating instruction on executive functions into content lessons emphasizes that:

1. Students are in charge of their learning.

2. Honing their use of these skills and abilities will improve their performance in school and beyond.

Teaching students that they are the "conductors of their own brains" conveys the need to master a wide range of thinking and learning tools for use across core academic subjects, in their personal lives, and later in their college years and careers. Success in the 21st century demands self-directed learners and independent, creative thinkers.

Classroom Strategies to Support Executive Functioning

From elementary through high school and into adulthood, students will benefit from these opportunities to understand and develop their executive functioning:

1. Introduce the concept of executive functions and refer to these learning tools explicitly and often.

Define executive functioning, and lead discussions on how being aware of their thinking and taking control of their learning can help students achieve success in school and other aspects of their lives. A key message is that using executive functions often and effectively doesn't just happen -- we all have to work toward developing these abilities. Apply metaphors of executive functioning (the brain's conductor or air traffic controller, for example), and invite students to share examples of how they can use executive functioning in their lessons and activities outside of school. How do adults use executive functioning in their jobs? How do the actions of characters in stories demonstrate executive functioning?

2. Provide student-centered opportunities to put executive functioning to work.

Include students in setting learning goals for lessons, and let them choose their own books for independent reading and subjects for classroom projects. Giving students choices enhances motivation by giving them a chance to think about subjects that interest them, and also underscores that they are in charge of their learning.

3. Be the "prefrontal cortex" for your class.

Articulate and model effective thinking practices. For example, clearly state your intent for a learning activity and demonstrate the steps of planning, carrying out, and assessing the outcomes of the activity. Identify up front any thorny problems and tough spots in new lesson content, and talk through possible strategies for identifying and overcoming any learning difficulties that arise. Use cues to remind students when activating their executive functions might be useful.

4. Catch students using executive functions effectively.

Congratulate students who recognize and correct mistakes to emphasize that mistakes are prime learning opportunities. Recognize not just the finished product, but also the hard work and the steps of planning and execution that students accomplished in completing a big project. Especially celebrate the successes of students who've struggled with taking charge of their learning in the past.

5. Clearly state classroom rules that support positive and productive learning interactions.

A well-organized environment with predictable rules allows students to more easily focus on the learning tasks at hand.

How do you approach teaching and encouraging students to develop their executive functioning in your classroom?

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Strategies for Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functions

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Earlier in Donna's career as a teacher and school psychologist, she assessed, diagnosed, and helped to create interventions for children and youth who had difficulty with their executive functioning. Today as teacher educators, we are pleased that our graduates are increasing students' cognitive, metacognitive, and executive functioning in classrooms around the world (as just one example, Texas teacher Diane Dahl blogs on teaching metacognition).

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These opportunities activate the isolated small neural networks of facts or procedures, which then undergo the cellular changes of neuroplasticity that link them into larger neural circuits of related information. These extensive neural circuits integrate new information when they are a) simultaneously activated and b) when they recognize patterns in common.

The expanding of related categories of information (Piaget's schema) through executive function activities will consolidate learning into networks. These networks can be activated when students are prompted to use new learning to solve problems or create new products. This is the transfer process that further promotes network activation with the resulting neuroplasticity to construct long-term memory. Without these opportunities for strengthening, any memories learned by rote are simply pruned away from disuse after the test.

2) Introduce Activities to Support Developing Executive Function

Students need to be explicitly taught and given opportunities to practice using executive functions such as how to learn, study, organize, prioritize, review, and actively participate in class. Activities that can support executive function network development include comparing and contrasting, giving new examples of a concept, spiraled curriculum, group collaboration, open-ended discussions. Additionally, executive function is developed when students summarize and symbolize new learning into new formats, such as through the arts or writing across the curriculum. (See The Brain-Based Benefits of Writing for Math and Science Learning.)

Authentic, student-centered activities, projects, and discussions will give students the opportunity to do the following:

Make predictions

Solve a variety of types of problems

Pursue inquiries

Analyze what information they need

Consider how to acquire any skills or knowledge they lack to reach desirable goals

This type of student-prompted information and skill seeking strengthens students' attitude about the value of learning. When motivated to solve problems that are personally meaningful, students apply effort, collaborate successfully, ask questions, revise hypotheses, redo work, and seek the foundational knowledge you need them to learn. And they do this because they want to know what you have to teach.

When students acquire desired facts, skills, or procedures to achieve authentic, valued goals, the information has a template (neural circuit) to which it can link. Foundational knowledge is not isolated. Learning is consolidated into related patterns, connected in neural networks of long-term conceptual memory, and available for retrieval and transfer to solve future problems and investigate new ideas.

3) Model Higher Thinking Skills

In planning instruction, consider how and when you will model these higher thinking skills and provide opportunities for students to activate their developing executive function networks throughout the learning process.

Judgment

This executive function, when developed, promotes a student's ability to monitor the accuracy of his or her work, and to analyze the validity of information heard or read. Techniques such as estimation with feedback and adjustment, editing and revising one's own written work using rubric guidance, or evaluating websites using criteria to separate fact from opinion are examples of promoting the development of networks for judgment.

Prioritizing

This executive function helps students to separate low relevance details from the main ideas of a text or topic of study. Prioritizing is the executive function that guides students when they plan an essay, select information to include in notes, and evaluate word problems in math for the relevant data. Prioritizing also promotes one's ability to combine separate facts into a broader concept with recognition of degrees of relevance and relatedness.

Prioritizing networks will be activated as you guide students to organize, plan ahead, keep records of their most successful strategies, and use this information to make the most efficient use of their time.

Setting Goals, Providing Self-feedback and Monitoring Progress

Until students fully develop these pre-frontal cortex (PFC) executive functions, they are limited in their capacity to set and stick to realistic and manageable goals. As they develop these executive functions, they need guidance to recognize their incremental progress they make as they apply effort towards their larger goals. This is part of the "video game model" described in my previous blog, How to Plan Instruction Using the Video Game Model.

Prior Knowledge Activation and Transfer Opportunities

Plan activities where students can relate what they know from past experiences to their current learning and tie it to the larger concept. When you provide learning experiences by which students can apply new learning to multiple applications, you promote the neural construction of larger conceptual networks that make the new information a valued tool and part of long-term memory. An example would be the use of the rules of magnetism and geographic facts to discover how to use a compass.

Metacognition

Taking the time to plan learning contexts that are personally desirable often means going beyond the curriculum provided in textbooks. This is a hefty burden when you are also under the mandate of teaching a body of information that exceeds the time needed for adequate activation of prior knowledge and mental manipulation. When you plan for and teach with mental manipulation for executive function in mind, your students will come to recognize their own changing attitudes and achievements. When students begin to experience and comment on these insights, consider sharing the processes you used to create the instruction that they respond to positively. Describe your mental manipulation, challenges, and the executive functions you used to create something new as you found the authentic active learning opportunities that activated the students' interest, perseverance, and higher levels of thinking.

These are teachable moments to promote student metacognition, where they can recognize their abilities to extend their horizons and focus beyond simply getting by with satisfactory grades. Help them make the connection that they can build their executive function of long-term goal-directed behavior when they choose to review and revise their work, even when it has been completed, rather than to be satisfied with "getting it done." Your input helps students see the link between taking responsibility for class participation, proactive collaboration, and setting high self-standards for all classwork and homework such that they can say, "I did all I could to do my best."

Making the Case for Investing in Executive Functions

As the caretaker of your students' brains during the years of rapid prefrontal cortex development, you should consider how you can activate and guide the development of your students' greatest resources -- strong executive functions. The opportunities you provide for mental manipulations using these critical neural networks are precious gifts. These tools will empower them to achieve their highest potentials and greatest satisfaction as they inherit the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Time Well Spent

Planning instruction and teaching units that activate executive function processing takes teacher and student time -- and it's time that's already severely taxed. However, that time is regained because the learning in these units is successfully retained in long-term memory and re-teaching time is vastly reduced.

The first ones to notice the brain changes of learning that is mentally manipulated through executive functions may be your students. Beyond the increased engagement they experience through active learning, they will find it takes less time to review for tests beyond the unit test, such as a final exam. You'll find that students, who previously didn't have the growth mindset needed to stay with challenging lessons when understanding was not instantaneous, now persevere. But the "payoff" will be especially powerful when their teachers ask you the next year, "What did you do?? The students from your class actually remember what they learned last year."

Now think what this means in terms of time. If you didn't have to re-teach "last year's material" you'd be getting all those weeks of time at the beginning of each unit. Thus the a school that promotes instruction for the activation that is needed for development of strong tracts of executive function and long-term memory will build better brains for its students. These brains will retain learning in sustained, transferable, and retrievable long-term memory. Instead of the re-teaching previously required before new instruction can start, there will be weeks of "found time."

Take Care of Yourself

In the professional learning communities I observe when I travel throughout the country I see dedicated professionals who chose to become educators because of their dedication to making a difference for all students. Teachers are drawn to their career choices for admirable reasons. (We know it is not for the big bucks or having the work day "end at 3.") Creativity, imagination, perseverance, and motivation endure in the educators I meet, even in these times of teacher blame and over-packed curriculum.

It is critical that we prepare today's students with the executive function skill sets they will need for success in the globalized, information explosive, and ever-expanding technologically progressive 21st century. Just as certain is the continued accountability by educators to teach the over-packed curriculum in the existing standards.

Please take care of yourselves. Take the time to acknowledge any progress toward your goals. What I'm advocating regarding more activation of students' executive function networks may not provide you with immediate evidence of the changes you are promoting in their brains -- although it is highly likely you'll find behavior "management" problems decrease as engagement increases. You'll have to use your executive function of resisting immediate gratification (such as eight hours of sleep or a weekend without prep work) to persevere on the long-term goal of setting in motion the birth of dendrites and synapses to give your students the best chance of achieving their highest potentials of professional, social, and emotional joy, and success in the years to come.

Thank you for what you do!

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Three Brain-Based Teaching Strategies to Build Executive Function in Students | Edutopia

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These opportunities activate the isolated small neural networks of facts or procedures, which then undergo the cellular changes of neuroplasticity that link them into larger neural circuits of related information. These extensive neural circuits integrate new information when they are a) simultaneously activated and b) when they recognize patterns in common.

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Executive Function, Arts Integration, and Joyful Learning

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Executive Function, Arts Integration, and Joyful Learning

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When the brain has reasons to expect that something previously pleasurable will soon happen, such as when a creative activity will be part of new learning, that expectation results in increased release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which increases pleasure and reduces stress. When students have the expectation of pleasure prior to the introduction of new material, the release of this anticipatory dopamine can release students from the hold of self-predicted failure.

Fixed Mindset to Growth Mindset

Arts, writing and other creative representations embedded throughout the curriculum can reignite the childhood joy students came to associate with learning, discovering, and creating. These opportunities increase interest, motivation, active participation and effort for all learners as they are disabused of the message that one's intelligence and potentials are defined by standardized math and language arts test scores.

Through the work of Carol Dweck and others, we've associated a fixed mindset of beliefs that students often acquire after their efforts toward success repeatedly fail. Students with fixed mindset may lose motivation and reduce effort because they believe their intelligence and skills are predetermined, limited and unchangeable, and therefore effort is fruitless.

Embedding the arts in instruction and assessment can change these students from the beliefs of a fixed mindset to those of a growth mindset. Indeed, with effort, practice and newly recognized skillsets, they can transform their capacity for learning and increase their academic success.

Learning that incorporates the arts, movement or physical enactment offers students opportunities to engage their academic subjects through talents and abilities which they have not previously recognized as being relevant to their scholastic and cognitive potentials. The representation of learning through creative arts also reduces mistake anxiety by removing expectations for a single correct response or product. When students have choices in ways to practice, use and demonstrate understanding of learning through drawing, computer art, skits, script writing, raps and songs, the brain can be released from the mindset of low expectations of success. When confidence grows through the arts, it may be the first time some students will experience success in certain academic subjects.

The arts can be used to re-motivate frustrated students or enrich the conceptual learning for bored students who have already mastered the information. In these cases, however, artistic activities should be authentic and meaningful; they should not be perceived by students as "add-on fluff" to academic subjects. Indeed, the authenticity of the incorporation must be evident to them if they are to participate to their highest potentials and grow in confidence and competence from their achievements.

Immediate Gratification or Effort Toward Goals

One of the most critical executive functions developing in students' prefrontal cortexes is the ability to delay immediate gratification and to apply effort toward goals that are not immediate. This is a habit of mind that sustains successful adults through challenging times and gives them the perseverance to effect positive change even when initial responses are less than enthusiastic.

These executive functions cannot spring up de novo after students leave school. While their judgment, prioritization and goal pursuit neural networks are undergoing their greatest rate of maturation between ages 5 and 25, students need experiences that correlate effort toward progress. They need positive learning, assessment and feedback experiences to build the understanding that, even when pleasure or success is not immediate, their planning, prioritizing and sustained effort can bring long-term and powerful satisfaction.

Through authentic embedding of the arts, you can guide students to recognize the links between their efforts and successful goal outcomes over time. As these positive learning and assessment experiences continue and students begin to build confidence, they will apply effort even when the pleasure is not instantaneous. This begins building their habit of mind such that they recognize value in the practice, review and application of learning even the most challenging or "boring" fundamentals in terms of goals they envision beyond the classroom.

You may recognize the impact of your efforts as you see students apply more effort, collaborate successfully, ask questions, revise work and review foundational knowledge as they recognize how these can help them reach what they now perceive as achievable and desirable goals.

The Arts and the Neuroscience of Joyful Learning

The arts also promote symbolic/conceptual thinking and innovative skillsets. Arts integration correlates with students' increased sustained attention not only while participating in art-related activities, but also with increased attention span in general and improved critical thinking (Posner and Patoine, 2009; Uptis and Smithrim, 2003).

With the arts in the picture, classrooms can be the safe havens where emotional comfort and pleasure are companions to knowledge acquisition. Students will gain emotional resilience as they learn more efficiently and at higher levels of cognition.

It will take more time and study to make greater direct correlations between the research and teaching interventions. However, the good news is that the preliminary neuroscience research correlates experience in symbolic representation of academic learning with the neural activity seen when the brain processes information using the highest forms of cognition, creative problem solving, critical analysis and innovation.

Notes

Posner, M. & Patoine, B. (2009). How arts training improves attention and cognition. The Dana Foundation.

Talmi, D., Anderson, AK., Riggs, L., Caplan, JB., Moscovitch, M. (2008). "Immediate memory consequences of the effect of emotion on attention to pictures," Learn. Mem. 15, 172-182.

Uptis, R. & Smithrim, K. (2003). Learning through the Arts National Assessment.

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Executive Function, Arts Integration and Joyful Learning | Edutopia

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When the brain has reasons to expect that something previously pleasurable will soon happen, such as when a creative activity will be part of new learning, that expectation results in increased release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which increases pleasure and reduces stress.

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4 Simple Exercises to Strengthen Your Attention and Reduce Distractibility

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4 Simple Exercises to Strengthen Your Attention and Reduce Distractibility

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Our attention gets hijacked by everything from the stress in our lives to the ding of our phones. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows how we can cultivate the ability to focus on what really matters.

"I think, therefore I am distracted."

If Descartes were writing today, this is what his famous aphorism might have become. We're living in an age of distraction, battered by our own customized waterfall of notifications, alerts, texts, videos, bingeable TV, and more. It's not surprising our minds often feel like a jumble.

But it turns out we're not at the mercy of our runaway minds. Amishi Jha (TED Talk: How to tame your wandering mind), an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami and the director of contemplative neuroscience for the UMindfulness Initiative, studies the brain's attention mechanisms, and she's found there are specific exercises we can do to strengthen our ability to pay attention. Here, she explains how you can get your wandering mind back under control.

Our attention is fragile. Jha likens our attention to a "a flashlight you can direct to whatever you choose." Since research indicates our mind wanders 50 percent of our waking hours, it means most of us are walking around with darting, flickering flashlights. Internal distractions - everything from job stress to a craving for alcohol - and external distractions - like a thunderstorm weather alert on our phone screen - easily disrupt our attention. Whether the interruptions are significant or silly, they are "a basic hijacking of our attentional resources away from the task at hand," she says. This lack of attention has serious consequences for all of us, but especially for people in high-stakes fields like medicine, the military and criminal justice.

So, how do we gain control of those flickering flashlights and achieve focus? "That's where mindfulness training comes in," says Jha. She describes this training as a "portable brain fitness routine to keep our attention strong." She has tested the effects of such training on subjects in high-stress groups, like athletes and military personnel. Her research has found that the attention of someone who hasn't had mindfulness training declines when they're under intense stress, but in people who've had training, their attention remains stable. What's more, in people who regularly do mindfulness exercises, their attention actually gets better over time - even when they're under stress. According to Jha, researchers have started to uncover other benefits associated with mindfulness, including reduced anxiety, protection from depression relapse, and improved working memory.

What is mindfulness? It's about paying attention to the present moment with awareness and without emotional reactivity. "It doesn't require any particular worldview or spiritual or religious belief system," says Jha. Mindfulness training can be broken down into two major categories: focused attention and open monitoring. They're very different, yet complementary, practices.

Focused attention exercises cultivate your brain's ability to focus on one single object, like one's breath. To do mindful breathing, sit in a comfortable, upright position and focus all your attention on the sensation of breathing - "for example, the coolness of air moving in and out of your nostrils or your abdomen moving in and out," says Jha. "Focus on something that is tied to your sensory experience. When your mind wanders away from that sensation to internal mental content or an external distraction, gently return it to the breath-related object." Don't be surprised or disappointed if you find yourself retrieving your mind hundreds of times during a 15-minute session. Think of your brain like a puppy you're training to walk on a leash. Gently redirect it every time it darts away.

Another focused-attention exercise is mindful walking. Notice the sensations of walking - "your feet on the ground, the wind caressing your skin, sounds in the air," says Jha. Walking can take place either indoors or outdoors. You might find this activity easier than mindful breathing; go with whatever exercise works best for you.

One final focused-attention exercise is the body scan. Remember the idea of your attention being like a flashlight? "A body scan is essentially taking that flashlight and directing it systematically through the entire body," Jha says. Start by focusing your attention on your toes, taking note of whatever sensations might be there. Tightness? Tingling? Warmth? Cold? Next, you can move on to the soles of the feet and the heels, then the legs, stomach, and so on, slowly moving your flashlight up your body. After you have a good grounding in focused attention practice and can keep your attention on a particular object or set of sensations for a period of time, you can move on to open monitoring.

Open monitoring helps you learn to pay attention to what's happening around you without becoming attached to it. This practice is not about paying attention to a particular object or objects. Instead, it's about remaining open to any experience - internal or external - that arises, and allowing it to wash over you. "You don't process it, you don't think about it," Jha says. "You just notice its occurrence and allow it to dissipate." To do this, sit in a comfortable, upright position and try to be aware of any sensations, thoughts or emotions that emerge, without holding on to them. It might help you to label what comes up by using words like "planning," "worrying," "judging," "remembering." You can do this silently or out loud. After you name it, let it go. Think of what you're doing as like watching clouds move in the sky and observing the different shapes they make - but in this practice, you're watching your thoughts travel through your mind. And yes, there will be times when you feel like you keep getting hooked on a particular thought or sensation and can't seem to drop it. Says Jha, "If you find you're so lost in thought that you can't do the open monitoring practice, go back to doing a focused attention exercise to steady yourself again."

People generally start to see benefits when they practice for about 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for around 4 weeks. "If you do more, you benefit more," she says, "but if you do less than 12 minutes a day, we don't really see any benefits." If you try any of these exercises and have trouble keeping your mind still, know that that's a common experience. Jha urges people not to feel discouraged - as with any new activity or sport, you need to practice. "The mind will wander, and that's completely fine. It's not about not letting the mind wander; it's when the mind wanders, to gently return your attention," she says.

Start small. "Begin with whatever you consider a reasonable goal and cut it in half, and make a commitment for some period of time," says Jha. Your goal might be as simple as vowing to stop every day and take the posture of one of the practices, says Jha. Chances are, once you sit (or walk), you'll decide to stay for a while. Whatever your initial goal, commit to that for a month - and congratulate yourself for making it! - and then gradually increase your practice time until you're doing it for 15 minutes, 5 days a week. Finding a mindfulness community, whether virtual or in person, can help you stick to the activity. What's most important, says Jha, is to make sure "you really support yourself to create the habit of practicing," whether that means setting multiple reminders for yourself or finding a quiet spot and time at your home or workplace to sit.

Jha has seen the positive impact of mindfulness training on the many people she's worked with over the years. One thing that struck her is how much the military personnel say it has improved not just their ability to work under pressure but also their home lives. Many told her that they'd struggled to be present with their families after returning from deployment. But after mindfulness training, they found they were better able to be present with their loved ones - which is something most of us would like to do, too. "This idea of being present to the people around us when we really want to be present - it often escapes us how to do this," says Jha. By reclaiming our own attention, we can more fully connect with the people who matter to us.

To see a list of mindfulness resources from Jha, go here. To help you get started, she suggests trying the apps Insight Timer, Headspace and 10% happier. Additional resources for online and in-person mindfulness courses can be found at the Center for Healthy Minds, the Penn Program for Mindfulness, the Contemplative Sciences Center, Duke Integrative Medicine, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF, the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, the UMass Center for Mindfulness, the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt.

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4 simple exercises to strengthen your attention and reduce distractibility

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Our attention gets hijacked by everything from the stress in our lives to the ding of our phones. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows how we can cultivate the ability to focus on what really matters.

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How to Succeed in High School With ADHD: A Teen's Guide

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How to Succeed in High School With ADHD: A Teen's Guide

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With the simpler demands of middle school behind you, you'll need better study skills, time-management tools, and organization strategies than ever. This is also the time to become your own advocate. With your parents' support, you can be an active participant in getting the help you need. Start by meeting with each of your teachers to explain how you learn best and how they can help you stay focused and organized. When you're ready, take an active role in your special-ed team meetings to get the accommodations that will allow you to succeed. By the time you leave high school, you should be able to determine when and where you need help, and how to get it. Here's how to succeed in high school with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD or ADD).

Academics: What You Can Do

Bring order (and color!) to your notes. Take class notes in outline fashion, using graph paper and colored pens or highlighters to help the main points jump off the page. Use the same technique for reading assignments, so you won't have to read material twice.

Review early and often. Immediately after a difficult class, review your notes. Then read them again in the evening. Reviewing notes on the day you take them can double the amount of information you retain.

Multitask - quietly. Do your homework or read in class, if it helps you to focus. (Consider sitting in the front, to avoid distractions.)

Break down complex assignments. Complicated, long-term projects can be your undoing unless you break them into manageable chunks.
[Free Download: Transform Your Teen's Apathy Into Engagement]

1. In the research stage, use color-coded sticky notes in books and articles to designate each subtopic; cut and paste online materials into a word-processing document.

2. Decide on a deadline for each section, and set alarms in your electronic timer or cell phone to remind you when it's due. Some students promise to show sections to their teachers along the way, to keep themselves accountable.

Follow your interests. Look for ways to weave your passions into papers and projects - you'll be much more likely to focus. If you're a runner and you have to write about ancient Greece, for example, research the history of the marathon.

Master test-taking. Check with your teacher about what material will be covered and the format of the test - you'll study differently for an essay test than for a multiple choice. Break the material down and review it over several days. Tutor other students, or have a study buddy quiz you. Find a memorization strategy that works for you. You might create new lyrics to a popular song, or use flashcards or mnemonics. Students who learn visually may benefit from drawing or building a physical model of concepts.

When in doubt, seek help. If you don't understand something, get answers from a classmate who is on top of the course. If you're struggling with a paper, show your teacher what you've done so far.

What Parents Can Do

Keep a lower profile. During these pivotal four years of high school, consider yourself less of a coach and more of a partner, working with your child to achieve school success. Each year, pull back a bit more. By senior year, your child should be taking the reins - figuring out what they need, setting priorities, and arranging for the right kind of help.

Start each year with a plan. Sit down with your child to discuss the upcoming school year. What challenges are in store, and what kinds of support might they need? Together, determine who will talk to teachers and school officials, and how and when to approach them. Make sure you both attend meetings to revisit IEP or 504 accommodations.

Quiz your student. They should know their learning style - visual, auditory, or kinesthetic - and have suitable study techniques to prepare for tests. They should also have a feel for which courses play to their strengths and which ones will be a problem.

Get outside help. If your child is confused by calculus or daunted by English composition, bring in a tutor. If they struggle to keep track of assignments or deadlines, consider hiring a coach. At this age, they're more likely to accept help from others than from you.

Provide a challenge. Teens with ADHD sometimes fail because they're not sufficiently engaged. Consider moving your child to an accelerated class, or enroll them in a summer course at a local college.

Offer rewards. Rewards are a great motivator, even at this age. Try verbal encouragement, extending privileges, increasing allowance, or a special trip. Frequent rewards, on a daily or weekly basis, work best.
[Read: The High School Study Guide for Teens with ADHD] In the classroom:
Use webs, cluster maps, and semantic maps to categorize or identify related information. A central concept is placed in the center of related subtopics, and further details extend from each of the subtopic areas.

Offer alternatives to a written book report. Give students choices - writing a letter to the main character, creating a book jacket or a board game based on the book.
At home:
Use different-colored highlighters to emphasize different types of information: one color for dates, another for names, and a third for definitions.

Try tech for quicker reads. A scanning pen scans text as it's dragged along the page. The pen displays the words on an easy-to-read screen, speaks them aloud, and provides definitions.

Math Tips
In the classroom:
Use math computer programs for drill and practice. Many students with ADHD have illegible handwriting, or lose track when doing multiple-step problems.

Encourage students to keep a card file of specific math skills, concepts, rules, and algorithms, along with specific examples of each on the card for reference.
At home:
Practice, practice. Answer the sample questions in your textbook. Ask your teacher for more practice problems. Try to teach the problems to another student.

Solving problems. Label each step of your process, and leave plenty of white space between steps, so you can easily see where you went astray.

Writing Tips
In the classroom:
Use a graphic organizer. This tool asks basic questions about the topic and organizes material visually to help with memory recall. Distribute pre-printed blank forms for students to fill in, so they can reserve their effort for writing the essay.
At home:
Use mind maps - a graphic way of representing ideas and their relationships. Draw circles, write ideas within each of them, then connect and prioritize thoughts.

Allow time for incubation. Set aside your writing and come back to it the next day. You will see potential improvements that can be made.

Organization: What You Can Do

Carve out a workspace. Use the "suitcase rule" to de-clutter your room. What would you pack if you were going away for a week? Put everything else away in a closet or another room. Still can't see your desktop? Stash anything you don't use every day in a box near your desk.

Assign everything a place. Get file holders, trays, desk caddies, shelves - whatever you need to organize your work space. Label each container with colored index cards, stickers, or pens. Do the same with your car and school locker. To keep your locker organized, bring everything home at the end of each week and before every school break.

Be bag-specific. Keep a separate bag for books and schoolwork, sports equipment, band paraphernalia, after-school clothes. Assign pockets in each bag for specific items.

Hold on to notebooks. Write your name, phone number, e-mail address, and locker or mailbox number inside the cover or on the first page. If you lose it, the odds are good that it will be returned to you.

Keep a calendar at hand. Always carry an appointment book or electronic calendar - a planner or a smart phone works. Just as you assign a place for your physical possessions, you should designate a time for each of your commitments.

What Parents Can Do

Post a calendar in the kitchen. Include all family events and obligations, so that your teen can add them to his personal schedule. If you both work from electronic calendars, set aside time each evening to update and synchronize.

Keep a to-do chart. Does your teen have responsibility for housekeeping chores? Post a checklist as a nag-free reminder.

Establish a ready-to-go place. Reserve a shelf or cabinet by the front door, where your teen can park what she needs for school - books, keys, wallet, and meds.

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How to Succeed in High School with ADHD: A Teen's Guide

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These academic and organizational tips are designed to help high school students with ADHD finish homework, execute long-term projects, manage their time, earn high grades, and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

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Are You Having Trouble Paying Attention?

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Are You Having Trouble Paying Attention?

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“Stolen Focus:” Are You Having Trouble Paying Attention?

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How long can you focus on a thought – or anything – without being interrupted by your flashing phone? With a powerful distraction inches away, many people find their ability to focus has dwindled to a matter of minutes, according to our next guest. New York Times bestselling author Johann Hari explores the importance of attention and how it has been “stolen” in his latest book.

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🔥 How to Concentrate in Class and Pay Attention | ADHD Students School Focus | Memory Study Skills

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Concentration Challenge: Can You Count the Bounces?

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Concentration Challenge: Can You Count the Bounces?

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Concentration Challenge - Can you count the bounces?

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Welcome to Room 327! Here, on a warm day in May, you'll find thirty third graders reading independently. The room is silent, save for the occasional chuckle or sound of disbelief you might expect from children fully immersed in their reading. Meanwhile, I'm conferencing with individual students, running guided reading groups, or holding book club meetings. This scene continues for over fifty minutes until I ring the chime, signaling the end of independent reading.

"What?" "No way!" "That felt like 10 minutes!" From the looks and sounds of the students' reactions, they want to and could stay reading.

Was this what you would have seen if you'd visited at the beginning of school? Absolutely not. Earlier in the year, this group of third graders couldn't sustain their focus for more than a few minutes at a time, with reading or any other independent work. They'd get up and wander the room, fidget with their pencil cases, or let their eyes wander off the page. Lacking the skills to stick with the task at hand, they were easily distracted and quickly tired.

It's important to deliberately stretch students' ability to focus-because without that ability, they'll find it harder and harder to feel the joy in learning, and harder and harder to do the rigorous work being asked of them in this age of the Common Core State Standards. So how can teachers help students build stamina for sustained focus? Over my ten years of teaching, I've found that the following strategies work well.

Teach What Staying Focused Looks Like

I make sure students know what staying focused looks, sounds, and feels like. Using Interactive Modeling, I teach and have students practice how to keep quiet, talking only when truly necessary. I model exactly what their eyes, mouths, hands, and feet should be doing when they're focused on a quiet independent task. I also teach "personal management"-for instance, how to take bathroom and water breaks if needed.

Relate Academic Stamina to Physical Stamina

I frequently use the analogy of marathon training when helping students build endurance for focusing. "Marathon runners can't run 26.2 miles on day one. They build endurance day by day. Maybe they run three miles at first, then four, and so on. Eventually they build to twenty or more miles. This is similar to the way we'll build our reading stamina. First we'll begin with three minutes, then five minutes, and then ten. Our goal is to read on our own for twenty minutes by the end of the month."

Teach how to Refocus

One important way to help students build stamina is to give them strategies for getting back on track when they lose focus. For example, I model breathing techniques (such as inhaling and exhaling slowly three times) and then students practice them. The goal is for students to have ways to take small breaks without disrupting their concentration or others'.

Use Visuals to Highlight Progress

Students are motivated by seeing their progress. My class uses a simple graph to show their progress in reading without distraction or teacher reminders from week to week (and eventually month to month).

Avoid "One Size Fits All"

For various reasons, some students will be able to build endurance more quickly than others. Increasing stamina is our common goal, but I differentiate how I help individual students get there. For instance, an accommodation I'd make for a student who isn't yet able to sustain independent reading for as long as the rest of the class might involve reading for less time and then working silently on a related activity such as a word search.

Reflect Regularly

Students need time to reflect on what's working well and what's challenging about sustaining focus. Sometimes I have them reflect on their level of concentration by writing in their notebooks or sharing during closing circle. I encourage students to name what gets in the way of focusing (such as sitting near a friend, having worried thoughts, or being hungry) and to address those issues if they can. I've found that hearing their peers identify difficulties motivates the class to work together to overcome those challenges.

Planning interesting and appropriately challenging lessons is certainly important when it comes to academic engagement. But we must also teach students to build stamina for sustained focus so they can become immersed-and successful-in their learning.

Kate Umstatter is a Responsive Classroom teacher.

Tags: Engaging Academics, Independence, Quiet Time

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Welcome to Room 327! Here, on a warm day in May, you'll find thirty third graders reading independently. The room is silent, save for the occasional chuckle or sound of disbelief you might expect from children fully immersed in their reading. Meanwhile, I'm conferencing with individual students, running guided reading groups, or holding book club meetings.

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17 Brain Breaks Tailored for High Schoolers

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17 Brain Breaks Tailored for High Schoolers

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Kids, like adults, cycle through periods of attention and inattention-though the duration of the interval changes with age and is variable across individuals. By high school, according to neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis, concentrated study of "20 to 30 minutes for middle and high school students calls for a three-to-five-minute break."

Regardless of attention spans, brain breaks can prevent older students from feeling overwhelmed and provide space for reflection, joy, and connection during a packed school day. They're also a crucial part of the learning process.

"According to one popular school of thought, it's the active, repeated manipulation of material that lays the neural foundations for skill development," writes Youki Terada, Edutopia's research editor. But breaks are often misconstrued as a pause in the active learning process, instead of "the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced," neuroscientist Leonardo Cohen and his team explain in a June 2021 study. In fact, Cohen continues, incorporating breaks into learning "plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill."

Brain "breaks" can take many different forms inside of the classroom, depending on the aim. To boost students' mood, Willis suggests activities that increase restorative neurotransmitters like dopamine: anything that involves "laughing, moving, listening to music, and interacting with peers." Likewise, brain breaks that incorporate physical activity not only provide a moment of stress relief for students but also increase the blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain-stimulating brain activity and helping students regain focus in the face of fatigue.

1. Thinking Outside the Box: On the board, provide students with the start of a doodle that they'll have to creatively transform into something unexpected. This can be anything from two lines to a squiggle or a half circle. To add in some student voice and choice, have volunteers suggest what the initial drawing prompt should look like. Sourced from Tina Centineo via X (formerly Twitter).

2. "Train Your Brain": A fun activity thatstarts by having students touch the tip of their nose with their right index finger and then touch their ear with their left hand index finger. Then have them switch the position of their hands, touching the tip of their nose with their left hand index finger and moving their right index finger to touch their ear. Kids should keep doing this until they can get it right, which may take only a few tries for some and much longer for others. To add an element of competition, see which student can do this activity for the longest without messing up. Sourced from PE teacher Matt Head via TikTok.

3. Would You Rather: Pair students up and have them discuss fun "would you rather" questions. Here are some examples of prompts:

Would you rather live in a world with no technology or a world with no nature?

Would you rather have the ability to speak with animals or the ability to speak all human languages fluently?

Would you rather have your favorite movie character as your best friend or your favorite book character as your sibling?

To add an element of movement, do this activity together as a class. Announce the prompt out loud, and have students go to one side of the room or the other to show which option they'd rather choose. A select couple of volunteers can raise their hands to explain their reasoning. Sourced from Education World.

9. What Is That?: Find a picture of something your class may never encounter in your subject area and display it for students to see. "I showed a physics class a murmuration of starlings but did not tell them what it was," explains former principal Peter Embleton. "No phones or computers, they had to figure out what was happening and why." This not only ignites student curiosity but may introduce your class to something they didn't previously know existed. Sourced from Peter Embleton via X.

11. 1, 2, 3, Math!: Similarly to rock, paper, scissors, students play against each other in pairs. After the players say "1, 2, 3, Math," each displays one, two, three, or four fingers in the palm of their hand. The first of the pair to correctly call out the sum of both players' fingers wins that round and a point. The first person to win three rounds is the champ. Sourced from: Lori Desautels.

13. Classwide Wordle: The word game that swept the nation is sure to keep your students on their toes. According to the game's website, you'll have six tries to guess the five-letter word of the day. The tile color changes depending on how close the guess is: A green tile means the letter "is in the word and in the correct spot," a yellow tile means the letter "is in the word but in the wrong spot," and a gray tile means the letter is not in the word at all. Try playing together as a class, and have students shout out their suggestions, voting on which ideas they like best. Sourced from Kim West via X.

14. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1: To keep kids alert during a long lesson, have them spend a couple of minutes stretching and moving around the room. Consider creating a short sequence of exercises that students can all do together to get their blood flowing-such as five high knees, four jumping jacks, three push-ups, two deep breaths, and one squat. Offering students the option to stand and do the sequence or alternatively sit and stretch in whatever way they choose ensures that this activity is inclusive and considers everyone in your classroom. Sourced from We Are Teachers.

15. Odd One Out: This Google Arts & Culture game challenges you to "guess the AI-generated imposter" among the artworks. You'll be presented with four images and have to guess which of the options was created by AI before time runs out. Compete all together as a class, or have students play together in small groups. This could inspire an interesting conversation around student perceptions and misconceptions of AI. Sourced from Tony Vincent via X.

17. Invisible Pictures: In groups of two, have one student "draw a picture in the air while their partner guesses what it is," writes assistant professor Lori Desautels. To give students a starting point, provide them with categories like foods, animals, or places, and then allow their creative minds to lead the way. For a bit of extra help, allow the guessing partner to ask one or two yes or no questions that will provide them with crucial context. Sourced from Lori Desautels.

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17 Brain Breaks Tailored for High Schoolers

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As high school students navigate more rigorous academic tasks and denser curricular material, the occasional 3-to-5-minute break delivers a wide range of benefits.

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11 Concentration Games to Help Students Improve Their Focus

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11 Concentration Games to Help Students Improve Their Focus

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In this guide

Have you ever wished for an easy way to boost your students' concentration and focus? As teachers, we know that "concentration allows [students] to understand and use available information or resources judiciously to solve problems more efficiently" ( Chrysalis Educare). If concentration and focus are key factors of academic success in the classroom, how do we quickly and efficiently build these skills?

In the fast-paced environment our students live in, concentration and focus are becoming increasingly more difficult skills to master in the classroom. In my 5th Grade classroom, I know that a lack of focus and concentration can lead to academic difficulties or overall distractions during lessons. My students who struggle with focusing are more likely to miss assignments, not understand material, or have lower grades.

I wanted to find easy ways for my students to work on concentration skills and improve their overall focus. As a teacher, there seems to be never enough time in the day, however, planning to incorporate low-preparation and easy concentration practice as part of my daily or weekly lesson planning has been a great addition to the day and my students love it! Incorporating short and easy concentration games act as a brain break or movement break for students in the classroom. Investing a few minutes into your students' focus and concentration will pay off throughout the school year and beyond!

Concentration games offer more than just entertainment or brain breaks in the classroom. These games provide a structured opportunity to practice improving attention spans, practicing concentration, and sharpening focus- all while having fun and building classroom community.

The following games offer students and teachers ways to practice and hone in concentration and focus skills through group activities, problem-solving, memory retention, and critical thinking. These games effectively train the brain to concentrate better and will improve students' focus on tasks in the classroom and in life. These games can be adapted to meet the needs of your unique individual group of students.

Check out this video to learn more about why concentration is a valuable skill in 21st century learning!

1) Math Simon Says
Age Range: Grade K-5 Special Considerations: Space to move
Math Simon Says is a low-prep and simple way to practice concentration skills with our youngest learners. During this classic game, students are focusing on "Simon" who is giving simple instructions like "touch your nose." The catch is that students need to wait until they hear "Simon says..." before the action! Math Simon Says provides an educational twist that students of any age can play to practice Math skills! Start with the classic phrases such as "touch your nose," then as students have a good understanding of the game add in Math facts! Some examples are, "hop on one foot 3 + 1 times" or "jump up 6 x 1 times." This tests students' concentration while also reinforcing Math facts and procedures!
Procedure:
2) Red Light Green Light
Age Range: Grade K-3 Special Considerations: Outdoors
In Red Light Green Light students are practicing concentration skills while getting out some energy. This concentration game is best played outdoors with space to move and run around, however, the students still will need to be able to hear. One person will be the "traffic light" telling the other students when to move or stop. This activity is best used as a brain break or a time when students need to move. This game provides a stress-free and engaging opportunity for students to practice concentration skills.
Procedure:

1. Choose one person to be the traffic light

2. The traffic light moves to the other end of the playing field

3. The traffic light shouts "green light" when students can move and "red light" when students should stop

4. The first person to make it to the traffic light wins!

Get creative!
There are several variations of this concentration game. Try this:

The traffic light can yell out "yellow light" for students to move in slow motion

The traffic light can turn their back and when they call out "red light" they turn around and try to catch someone moving. This person then returns to the starting point.

The traffic light can create fun and crazy ways for students to move during the "green light." For example: hopping on one foot, running with hands on your head, etc.

3) Sudoku
Age Range: Grade 5-8 Special Considerations: About 5-10 minutes of preparation
This classic concentration game can be played in a variety of ways! Students can create their own Sudoku boards to solve, solve boards on paper, or use a device to solve online! Using a website like sudoku.com, students can access concentration puzzles from anywhere.

Simple Sudoku puzzles are an excellent way to promote and reinforce the recognition of number forms. By turning recognition into a game, the child is not only gently encouraged to differentiate between figures, but because they must find missing numbers, they will naturally create figures in their mind's eye. This mental creation of numbers strongly reinforces the forms.
https://puzzlegenius.org

This game requires a sustained attention to detail and critical thinking skills to solve complex problems.
Procedure:

1. Sudoku boards are divided into 9 boxes, in each box players need to include the numbers 1-9

2. In each row or column, the numbers 1-9 also need to be represented

3. The catch is that each box, row, and column cannot include the same number twice

4. In order to solve the puzzle, each box, row, and column will have each number 1-9 represented one time

4) Math Bingo
Age Range: Any Special Considerations: About 30 minutes of preparation and printing involved
Math Bingo can be played at any level! This concentration game improves focus and allows students to work on Math learning skills. Students focus on solving math problems and mark off numbers on their Bingo cards. Before playing this concentration game, teachers should create Bingo cards that correspond to Math lessons or Math facts that students can use to play during the game. This game requires Math problem-solving skills and analytical thinking to improve concentration.
Procedure:

1. Each student receives a Bingo card with Math problems listed in each space

2. Teacher calls out "answers" to the problems instead of the problems themselves

3. On paper or mentally, students solve the problem and mark off the space on their Bingo card

4. If students mark off 5 correct answers in a row, they call out Bingo and are the winner

5) Word Chain
Age Range: Any Special Considerations: none
In this game, students must recall and add on to a chain of words that is created by the players. The word chain can be used as a vocabulary game to practice words and definitions, or just played with student-selected words or phrases.
Procedure:

1. Start with a random word chosen by the teacher or one student

2. Each student takes a turn adding a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word. (Ex. heart- turtle- egg)

3. Students recite each word in the list before adding on their next word

4. The game continues until one student remains and is able to recite the entire word chain

Get creative!

This game can be played with a stopwatch to see how fast students can recall words, or players can set a time limit to think of the next word in the word chain.

There is a free online version of this game that you can play as a whole class! Find the free version at wordgy.com. It might be helpful for students to play together before trying the game out individually.

6) Category Concentration
Age Range: Any Special Considerations: none
Category Concentration can be played at any age level! One player chooses a category and students select words or phrases that fit into the category. In order to practice concentration skills and focus, students can't repeat a word!
Procedure:

1. Select a category for students to choose words from (Ex. food, animals, clothing)

2. Students go around in a circle and say a word that fits into the chosen category

3. If a word is repeated or a word cannot be thought of, that student is out

Get creative!
This game can be tied into topics or units studied in class. A specific category can be chosen to review a topic in a specific subject or to activate prior knowledge before a lesson or unit.

7) Decipher the Code!
Age Range: Grade 3+ Special Considerations: Paper, art supplies, and time needed for activity
This concentration game improves focus by allowing students to be code creators or code breakers! One student develops a secret code with each letter of the alphabet representing a symbol or picture. Then, the student spells out a secret message for another student to solve! By engaging in this creative process, students not only sharpen their focus and problem-solving skills but also foster collaboration and communication skills as they decipher coded messages with their peers.
Procedure:

1. Students create secret code to correspond with each letter of the alphabet. For example, the code of shapes below can be used as an example.
Students create a secret message only using the secret code symbols for another student to solve.

2. Students switch off creating the code and generating the message and solving or cracking the code!

Get creative!

Codes can be totally random or focus on a specific topic or skill

This activity can be used as an early finisher activity that students who complete work can come back to throughout the week

Teachers can create their own codes for students to solve!

8) Silent Sorting
Age Range: Grade 3+ Special Considerations: Cards/pictures developed and printed by teacher prior to game
In Silent Sorting, there is no right answer! Students are given a stack of cards with a random assortment of words or pictures. Without speaking, students work in a small group to categorize, or sort, the cards into the most accurate categories. This concentration game actively encourages students to think critically and justify their reasoning.
Procedure:

9) Zip, Zap, Zop
Age Range: Grade 5-8 Special Considerations: Space to gather in a circle
In this popular theater game, students use concentration skills and focus to repeat a pattern while using their hands to 'pass' to another person in the group. This game requires students to focus on what everyone in the circle is doing and make eye contact in order to receive a 'pass' from another student in the group. Zip, Zap, Zop is best played outdoors or with space to gather in a circle and speak in a loud volume.
Procedure: Get creative!
After students successfully master using the words "zip, zap, zop," try the game using different variations of the words by adding a new consonant to the front. (Ex. dip, dap, dop)

This is a great example of Zip Zap Zop being played by theater professionals.

10) One Word Story
Age Range: Any Special Considerations: None
One Word Story is a concentration game that promotes literacy development while improving students' focus and attention! In this game, students collaboratively create an imaginative narrative story. Students work together and need to maintain focus to listen to what other students are saying while constructing the story. Each student takes a turn adding a word to a story to build upon the contributions of their peers. The story can be as real or imaginative as students would like. This activity fosters concentration, active listening, and collaborative storytelling skills.
Procedure:

1. Start with a sentence frame such as, "once upon a time"

2. Students sit in a circle and each say a word that logically comes next

3. The game ends when the story reaches a logical conclusion.

11) Who's the Leader?
Age Range: Any Special Considerations: Space to sit in a circle
This game helps improve students' focus and concentration. Someone is chosen as the leader and the rest of the group follows their movements. The leader starts a motion such as hand-clapping or patting their legs while the rest of the group mimics the motion as accurately as possible. One student is 'it' and is sent out of the space while the leader is selected. The person who is 'it' gets three tries to guess who the leader is in the circle. Concentration and focus are built while the group follows the leader as accurately and quietly as possible so as to not give it away to the person who is 'it.'
Procedure:
References

1. Puzzle Genius. (n.d.). 7 Incredible Benefits of Sudoku for Kids. Retrieved from https://puzzlegenius.org/7-incredible-benefits-of-sudoku-for-kids/

2. Chrysalis Kids. (October 19, 2022). Why is Concentration Important for Studying? Retrieved from https://www.chrysaliskids.com/blog/why-is-concentration-important-for-studying/

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11 Concentration Games To Help Students Improve Their Focus

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Fun & easy concentration games to help students enhance focus, improve memory, and boost academic performance, from Victoria Dotson's classroom.

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7 Ways to Increase a Student's Attention Span

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7 Ways to Increase a Student's Attention Span

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Focus Strategies for High School Students

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Focus Strategies for High School Students

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Focus Strategies for High School Students - Enriching Students

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This post will look at some helpful focus strategies for high school students. As a student, there are a lot of distractions. What can help?

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In recognition of the need for evidence-based, universal, trauma-responsive practices that support the complete physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being of children, youth, staff, and caregivers, the TASN School Mental Health Initiative has partnered with Little Flower Yoga to develop an online video series introducing practices that can be: a) instructionally embedded, and b) accessible to all.

Application for Children and Youth + Application for Staff and Caregivers

Children and Youth

The following videos can be played directly for children and youth. Each series includes an introduction and seven 20-minute lessons featuring over 30 mindfulness and school-based yoga practices.
Elementary (Children)

1. Introduction (13 minutes)

2. Exploring the Five Elements (22 minutes)

What are mindfulness and yoga?

Introduction to the five elements and foundational activities.

Share guidelines for participation.

3. Connecting to My Body (22 minutes)

Create opportunities for children to notice sensation in their bodies in various poses.

Review what yoga and mindfulness mean.

Increase self-awareness in relation to physical sensations.

4. Coming Soon!

5. Coming Soon!

6. Coming Soon!

7. Coming Soon!

8. Coming Soon!

Middle and High School (Youth)

1. Introduction (13 minutes)

2. Exploring the Five Elements (24 minutes)

What are mindfulness and yoga?

Introduction to the five elements and foundational activities.

Share guidelines for participation.

3. Connecting to My Body (25 minutes)

Create opportunities for youth to notice sensation in their bodies in various poses.

Increase self-awareness in relation to physical sensations.

4. Coming Soon!

5. Coming Soon!

6. Coming Soon!

7. Coming Soon!

8. Coming Soon!

Staff and Caregivers

An introduction and four, 5 to 20-minute lessons in energizing, restorative, chair yoga, and breath work practices.

1. Introduction (8 minutes)
Introduction to the well-being program, the 5 elements and pathways of mindfulness, and guidelines for participation.

2. Energizing Practice (13 minutes)
Chair-based mindfulness and yoga practices to help bring more empowered and alert energy into the body and moment.

3. Coming Soon!

4. Coming Soon!

5. Coming Soon!

Research on Mindfulness and School-Based Yoga

Neuroscientific research documenting the interconnectedness of social, emotional, intellectual, and physical well-being is well-established. Healthy cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills require regulation of the limbic system, or protective brain. Embodied mindfulness practices - with the express goal of building social and emotional competencies - support the regulation necessary for students to engage their prefrontal cortex, or thoughtful brain, and build the additional skills necessary for learning and healthy interactions. Kids need to move and connecting with sensation in the body is a particularly effective way to explore mindfulness. Practices derived from yoga ¹ serve to enhance existing efforts around social and emotional growth through the development of biological self-regulation skills. When mindfulness and yoga are taught together, each become more powerful teaching tools to cultivate inner resources that maximize resilience and support healthy navigation of challenges internally and externally:

Mental Health: Kansas Communities that Care data show increased levels of depression² and conflict³. Mindfulness and yoga may have beneficial effects on outcomes related to children's psychological well-being, such as reducing anxiety⁴ and depression⁵, alleviating stress⁶, and improving mental health⁷.

Physical Health: Kansas Model Grade-Level Outcomes for Physical Education refer to the value of body awareness, awareness of breath, strengthening and stress-reducing benefits of yoga.⁸ Studies have found that mindfulness reduces blood pressure⁹ and enhances sleep quality¹⁰ in high school students. Research also suggests that yoga enhances physical well-being¹¹, physical fitness¹², and balance, strength, and flexibility in youth.

Social and Emotional Skills: Kansas Social, Emotional, and Character Development Standards ¹³ note that "personal and academic success are built upon the ability to consider thoughts, understand feelings and manage one's responses" and the Kansans Can Competencies Framework ¹⁴ provides a process for embedding intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cognitive skills necessary for lifelong learning including those such as self-care. Mindfulness and yoga may have beneficial effects on a variety of social-emotional outcomes¹⁵ such as improved biological self-regulation16, 17, reduced hostility¹⁸, and fewer problem behaviors19, 20, and aid in developing a well-regulated foundation to support student engagement and further skill development.

Academic Performance: Kansas Communities that Care data indicates that approximately 37% of youth were at risk of academic failure in 2019 based on questions about their grades.²¹ Mindfulness and yoga may have beneficial effects on academic performance, such as improvements in quarterly grades²² and high-stakes test scores²³, and preventing declines in Grade Point Average (GPA)²⁴.

For systematic review papers and meta-analyses research on yoga and mindfulness for youth, see Serwacki and Cook-Cottone (2012), Khalsa & Butzer (2016), Carsley et al. (2017), Felver et al. (2015), Maynard et al. (2017), McKeering and Hwang (2018), Weaver and Darragh (2015), Dunning et al. (2018), Mak et al. (2017), and Zoogman et al. (2014). For guidance on the application of mindfulness and yoga in schools, see Secularity: Guiding Questions for Inclusive Yoga in Schools.

Adapted from Little Flower Yoga.

This resource is intended for educational purposes only. The information contained herein is not intended to take the place of informed professional diagnosis, advice, or recommendations. The KSDE TASN SMHI assumes no liability for errors or for the way in which this information is used. The TASN School Mental Health Initiative (SMHI) is funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (#H323A17006) and is administered by the Kansas Department of Education. The contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education and endorsement by the Office of Special Education Programs should not be assumed. The SMHI does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age in its programs and activities. Inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies should be sent to: Deputy Director, Keystone Learning Services, 500 E. Sunflower Blvd., Ozawkie, KS 66070; 785-876-2214.
References

1. Little Flower Yoga. 2015. LFY Training Manual: Level One. (p. 9). Little Flower Yoga.

2. Kansas Communities that Care. (2019). Depression. Retrieved 2020, May 11 from http://kctcdata.org/Manage/ViewQuestion?code=30120&building=0&questionId=Sui15_142&riskProtective=0&surveyType=KCTC&selectedSurvey=CTY&selectedCounty=30120-0&selectedCategory=-999&CategoryName=Depression%2FSuicide

3. Kansas Communities that Care. (2019). Problem Behaviors: Violence. Retrieved 2020, May 11 from http://kctcdata.org/Manage/ViewQuestion?code=30120&building=0&questionId=Q0066F&riskProtective=0&surveyType=KCTC&selectedSurvey=CTY&selectedCounty=30120-0&selectedCategory=-999&CategoryName=Problem%20Behaviors

4. Weaver, L. L., & Darragh, A. R. (2015). Systematic review of yoga interventions for anxiety reduction among children and adolescents. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 69(6). https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2015.020115

5. Chi, X., Bo, A., Liu, T., Zhang, P., & Chi, I. (2018). Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on depression in adolescents and young adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1034. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01034

6. Hagen, I., & Nayar, U. S. (2014). Yoga for children and young people's mental health and well-being: research review and reflections on the mental health potentials of yoga. Frontiers in psychiatry, 5, 35. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2014.00035

7. Dunning, D. L., Griffiths, K., Kuyken, W., Crane, C., Foulkes, L., Parker, J., & Dalgleish, T. (2018). The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on cognition and mental health in children and adolescents: A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. PsyArXiv, 9. Retrieved from https://psyarxiv.com/rj5mk/

8. Kansas State Department of Education. (2018). Kansas Model Grade-Level Outcomes for Physical Education. Retrieved 2019, October 9 from https://www.ksde.org/Portals/0/CSAS/Content%20Area%20(M-Z)/Physical%20Education/2018%20Kansas%20Model%20GLOs%20for%20PE%20by%20Standard%20FINAL%20102218.pdf?ver=2018-10-22-154200-883

9. Brown Wright, L., Gregoski, M. J., Tingen, M. S., Barnes, V. A., & Treiber, F. A. (2011). Impact of stress reduction interventions on hostility and ambulatory systolic blood pressure in African American adolescents. Journal of Black Psychology, 37(2), 210-233. doi: 10.1177/0095798410380203. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3319013/

10. Bei, B., Byrne, M. L., Ivens, C., Waloszek, J., Woods, M. J., Dudgeon, P., ... & Allen, N. B. (2013). Pilot study of a mindfulness‐based, multi‐component, in‐school group sleep intervention in adolescent girls. Early intervention in psychiatry, 7(2), 213-220. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-7893.2012.00382.x

11. Chen, D. D., & Pauwels, L. (2014). Perceived benefits of incorporating yoga into classroom teaching: Assessment of the effects of "yoga tools for teachers". Advances in Physical Education, 4(03), 138. doi: 10.4236/ape.2014.43018

12. Purohit, S. P., Pradhan, B., & Nagendra, H. R. (2016). Effect of yoga on EUROFIT physical fitness parameters on adolescents dwelling in an orphan home: A randomized control study. Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, 11(1), 33-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450128.2016.1139764

13. Kansas State Department of Education. (2018, July). Kansas Social, Emotional, and Character Development Model Standards, p. 10. Retrieved 2019, October 9 from https://www.ksde.org/Agency/Division-of-Learning-Services/Special-Education-and-Title-Services/Social_Emotional_Growth

14. Kansans Can Competencies. Retrieved 2019, October 9 from https://ksdetasn.org/competency and http://www.cccframework.org/

15. Maynard, B. R., Solis, M., Miller, V., & Brendel, K. E. (2017). Mindfulness-based interventions for improving cognition, academic achievement, behavior and socio-emotional functioning of primary and secondary students. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 13. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED573474

16. Bergen-Cico, D., Razza, R., & Timmins, A. (2015). Fostering self-regulation through curriculum infusion of mindful yoga: A pilot study of efficacy and feasibility. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(11), 3448-3461. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-015-0146-2

17. Deplus, S., Billieux, J., Scharff, C., & Philippot, P. (2016). A mindfulness-based group intervention for enhancing self-regulation of emotion in late childhood and adolescence: A pilot study. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 14(5), 775-790. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-015-9627-1

18. Frank, J. L., Bose, B., & Schrobenhauser-Clonan, A. (2014). Effectiveness of a school-based yoga program on adolescent mental health, stress coping strategies, and attitudes toward violence: Findings from a high-risk sample. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 30(1), 29-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/15377903.2013.863259

19. Frank, J. L., Kohler, K., Peal, A., & Bose, B. (2017). Effectiveness of a school-based yoga program on adolescent mental health and school performance: Findings from a randomized controlled trial. Mindfulness, 8(3), 544-553. doi: 10.1007/s12671-016-0628-3

20. Franco, C., Amutio, A., López-González, L., Oriol, X., & Martínez-Taboada, C. (2016). Effect of a mindfulness training program on the impulsivity and aggression levels of adolescents with behavioral problems in the classroom. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 1385. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5031764/

21. Kansas Communities that Care. 2019. Risk Factors: School Domain. Retrieved 2020, May 11 from http://kctcdata.org/Home/ViewRiskFactorsChart?selectedCounty=30120-0&grade=0&year=2020

22. Bakosh, L. S., Snow, R. M., Tobias, J. M., Houlihan, J. L., & Barbosa-Leiker, C. (2016). Maximizing mindful learning: Mindful awareness intervention improves elementary school students' quarterly grades. Mindfulness, 7(1), 59-67. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-015-0387-6

23. Bellinger, D. B., DeCaro, M. S., & Ralston, P. A. (2015). Mindfulness, anxiety, and high-stakes mathematics performance in the laboratory and classroom. Consciousness and Cognition, 37, 123-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.09.001

24. Butzer, B., van Over, M., Noggle Taylor, J. J., & Khalsa, S. B. S. (2015). Yoga may mitigate decreases in high school grades. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2015. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546979/

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In recognition of the need for evidence-based, universal, trauma-responsive practices that support the complete physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being of children, youth, staff, and caregivers, the TASN School Mental Health Initiative has partnered with Little Flower Yoga to develop an online video series introducing practices that can be: a) instructionally embedded, and b) accessible to all.

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6 Ways to Improve Sustained Attention Infographic

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6 Ways to Improve Sustained Attention Infographic