Focusing students’ attention on learning experiences is perhaps the most fundamental management challenge a teacher faces moment to moment in any classroom. |
A Repertoire of Attention Moves in Five Categories
Skillful teachers lay the groundwork for focusing student attention by systematically incorporating these attention principles and guidelines into the everyday fabric of classroom life. There are a wide range of in-the-moment moves that a teacher might use to capture, maintain, and recapture or refocus student attention. We tend to need these most when a learning experience is whole-group oriented and teacher directed.
Within this general class of attention moves, there are five categories: (1) desisting, (2) alerting, (3) enlisting, (4) acknowledging, and (5) winning. These moves can be thought of as having affective characteristics (from negative to positive) and power-sharing dynamics (from authority to attraction). Our repertoires for getting and keeping students on task should include at least a few moves from each of these categories. This is critical to being able to match the choice of move to what the situation warrants.
Skillful teachers lay the groundwork for focusing student attention by systematically incorporating these attention principles and guidelines into the everyday fabric of classroom life. |
When we notice that attention is fading we need to ask ourselves how long it has been since students last moved.
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