3 Simple Strategies To Get Your Students To Pay Attention

It’s one of the great challenges of teaching.

How do you compete with the distractions of a modern student’s life?

How do you interest them in what you’re offering when their entertainment options are so immediate, so exciting, and so easy?

How do you sell them on the cool complexity of a quadratic equation or the beauty of a delicate ecosystem?

How do you get them to appreciate the harsh struggle of the Lewis and Clark expedition or the clean simplicity of a well-written sentence?

How do you get them to pay attention in a world of instant gratification?

You can always dress up like Sacagawea. You can dance around your room in your lab coat bellowing, “She blinded me with science!” You can bring in your dog to show off his Pavlovian response.

Students love these kinds of things, no doubt about it. But every day? For every lesson? It just isn’t realistic.

Save your most attention-getting intros and time-consuming planning for cornerstone lessons; those that future learning is dependent upon.

For the day-to-day, however, you need on-the-spot strategies you can count on to get students to brighten up, lean forward, and hang on your every word—or at least most of them.

Here are three simple strategies you can pull out of your back pocket whenever you need them.

1. Exercise

Before beginning your lesson, ask your students to stand and join you for two-minutes of light exercise. You can do jumping jacks, knee bends, twists, stretches, or your favorite yoga poses. Anything that spikes the heart rate will do.

Studies show that exercise can boost brain function, improve mood, and increase learning. I’ve found that it clears mental clutter and provides the energy boost students need to be at their best.

Once they sit back down, your students will be refreshed, rebooted, and ready for learning. Use exercise breaks throughout the day and you’ll notice a difference in your students’ attentiveness and performance.

2. Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful way to introduce lessons. Nothing captures attention as effectively. For example, tell a five-minute story about your first roller coaster ride, and by the time you get to the topic of potential energy, every student will be strapped in and following along.

The inherent mystery in stories draws students into whatever world you create for them. And it keeps them there as they transform your descriptions into moving pictures in their head.

Stories also provide deeply layered context for students, linking their memories, emotions, and viewpoints to your lesson objectives. This makes complex ideas, like potential energy, easier to understand and remember.

Note: Storytelling can do more than just improve attentiveness. In fact, done a certain way, it can be one of your most effective classroom management strategies. To find out how, see Key #9: Be A Great Storyteller in the book Dream Class.

3. Curiosity

This strategy uses curiosity, which all students have in abundance, to entice them to follow along. And it’s as easy as it gets. Easy, though, doesn’t mean less effective. You can use this strategy several times a day, and it will never lose its attention-attracting luster.

The curiosity strategy starts with a promise. The teacher asks students to pay close attention, to mentally engage throughout the early stages of the lesson because, if they do, there will be a payoff at the end.

For example, the teacher might say, “Stick with me through these first couple of steps and I’m going to show you something really cool.” (Or we’re going to do something really cool–or amazing, scary, hilarious, beautiful, fascinating, easy, fun, or any number of possibilities.)

By holding back the part of the lesson that is most interesting or attractive to students, and dangling it like a carrot, you provide students a compelling reason to pay attention.

When you pause and look around the room before revealing the one thing they’ve been waiting for, you’ll see the anticipation on their faces. And their recall of everything leading up to that moment? Spot on.

There Is Always A Way

I know there are times when teaching can seem overwhelming. When nothing seems to work. When you’re tired and stressed. The hours are long. There is always so much to do.

But there is great hope. Because beneath the frustration, beneath the gloom and doom roar of the media, beneath the jaded cynicism of some of our colleagues, is this quiet fact:

There is always a way.

Shortcuts, strategies, and solutions abound to make teaching easier, faster, less stressful, more effective, and a lot more fun.

You really can create the class you want.

And I’m here to help you.

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Related posts:

1. 5 Strategies To Avoid With Difficult Students; Plus One Radio Interview
2. How To Signal For Your Students’ Attention
3. 7 Classroom Management Strategies To Get Your Class Back On Track
4. How To Stop Wasting Time And Attention On Difficult Students
5. 5 Simple Ways To Be More Likeable To Your Students

Tagged as: attention, Attentiveness, pay attention, teaching strategies