In the Classroom, Blazing a Path From Fidgeting to Focus

Current Issue #2 - Justin Fox
EDLA 615 - Language Arts and Technology

In the Classroom, Blazing a Path From Fidgeting to Focus (title linked to article)

By SUSAN ENGEL

New York Times, Education Section, October 3, 2007

This article spoke of how an elementary school teacher has found a way to deal with elementary school students becoming distracted during class time. The article describes how she integrated PowerPoint presentations into her classroom, and actually had students identify what they were thinking about during these “mind trips,” as an expert on learning disabilities, Mel Levine, defined them. From the article:

“Together she and the children put the written and spoken sentences onto PowerPoint, along with the illustrations. Each child’s work became a multimedia slide show about his or her daydreaming.”

Some of the items that they children stated directly related to their own abilities in completing tasks within the class, such as the length of time it takes them to write, or their own difficulties in concentrating upon the lesson at hand. The teacher feels that , “by describing their daydreams, children are “able to figure out not only what went wrong, but what kinds of thoughts and tricks could help them concentrate.”

I think this is a wonderful idea for how to deal with the concept of student daydreaming, yet may not be applicable everywhere. It is often that teachers tend to simply become angry when students become distracted in class, and expect all students to pay attention at all points of the lesson. Student attention spans, as with most Americans, are quite short, and students can thus be expected to be distracted by something else occurring within their environment at that point in time, or within their own mind.

What this article is basically saying, though, is not the only way in which students can be cajoled into becoming more focused during a lesson, but is merely one method. I like the fact, primarily, that the teacher is introducing higher-level, useful technology applications to students at such a young age. The fact that she is making students realize what is causing their distractions, and verbalizing them, allows students to possibly correct the issue.

Interestingly, my own AP brought this up this very issue to me the other day, quoting research that stated how students have a tendency to be able to concentrate on one topic for only 20 minutes. Her method is quite different, yet is much more well designed for the high-school level, and actually quite common. She stated how she designs class time to be spent in segments: 10 minutes for presentation (with student involvement as a whole-class activity), 10 minutes for group work (requiring students to shift their focus to each other, thus “resetting” their attention span), 10 minutes for a group presentation (resetting the attention once again, by shifting focus), then the remainder on homework review (student-centered). It relates a bit to the article, in how she realizes the presence of distractions, and creates constructive activities to combat such distractions. In her method however, and mainly because a Trigonometry class does not really lend itself to the “realization/self-recognition” method stated in the article, the distractions are controlled by the simple organization of class time.