Attention Skills

A student with attention needs has difficulty sustaining concentration and focusing on an activity while ignoring distractions.  The student might concentrate on tasks that are exciting or interesting, but have particular difficulty concentrating on activities that are not interesting, like school work.

Indicators:

Students with attention skills needs may:

• Be easily distracted
• Fail to pay close attention to details
• Show variable attention to tasks, from task to task, or from day to day
• Not seem to be listening when spoken to directly
• Not seem to be listening in class lessons
• Show good attention initially, but have difficulty sustaining attention for the whole lesson or task
• Appear to be daydreaming
• Appear to be restless
• Not show improvements in their ability to sustain attention, despite prompting
• Often be forgetful about routines, activities, their belongings, and other daily activities
• Make careless mistakes
• Be off-task, or doing a different task
• Not start work when requested, and might not complete work within the time allotted
• Avoid tasks that require high levels of mental effort
• Make careless mistakes in their work
• Have difficulty keeping track of their personal belongings
• Have difficulty organizing their work and activities
• Have problems following instructions and completing activities
• Have difficulty getting started on activities, particularly on those which are effortful or challenging
• Wander around the classroom or do the wrong activity during independent work times
• Show frustration when asked to complete tasks that are difficult for them

Instructional Strategies:
 
Instructional strategies fall into five broad categories:

• Get the student’s attention
• Structure and manage the task to meet the student’s needs
• Manage the student’s time on task and provide frequent breaks
• Teach organizational skills
• Communicate frequently with parent

1. Get the student’s attention:

• Address the student by name to catch his or her attention
• Be in the student’s immediate vicinity
• Teach the student to stop, look, and listen when instructions are given
• Ask the student to look at you while you give oral instructions, or to look at the work while you give a lesson
• Gain and hold eye contact with the student
• Have the student repeat instructions to ensure that he or she knows what to do
• Use the student’s preferred sensory modality, where possible:  visual, oral, or tactile
• Use novelty to help to capture the student’s attention
• Use a variety of presentation formats and materials to elicit attentio
• Regardless of the quality of the student’s work, provide positive reinforcement for attention to the task.
• Ignore behaviours that are off-task, and re-direct the student to the on-task behaviour
• If the student is agitated over an irrelevant issue, talk it through before returning the student to work.  Tell him or her that you will take 5 minutes to do so, and then he or she will do the work.

2. Structure and manage the task to meet the student’s needs:

• Give only one instruction at a time
• Present directions both orally and in writing, particularly, if they involve multiple steps
• Post visible and clear rules and instructions
• Divide all work assignments into smaller chunk
• Provide the student with a written and structured programme.  Post it so the student may refer to it
• Use colour coding to highlight critical information
• Identify tasks that the student can do alone, and tasks that will require the teacher’s intervention.
• Evaluate how the student is progressing and be prepared to change any component that is not working.
• If the student is not following through, review your strategy.  The most likely change you will have to make is to be more specific and more positive about what you want, and to be quicker to praise the student for compliance with at least some of your instructions.
• Gradually build up the number of steps for the student to do independently.
• Avoid multi-tasking.  It does not work.

3. Manage the student’s time on task and provide frequent breaks.

• Divide work assignments into chunks based on logical units and short work periods.  In the primary grades begin with 10 minute chunks.  Increase the duration as the student is able
• Give the student breaks or free time between work periods.  Breaks should be about 5 minutes and move away from the work area
• Allow the restless student to switch to a different task after a break from a frustrating one
• Use cueing strategies to help the student to identify when he or she is off task
• If the student does not sustain attention to task, prompt him or her to resume work.  If he or she does not immediately resume, provide a short break of about 5 minutes, and then re-direct the student to task.
• Provide the student with opportunities to move around the room to do appropriate tasks, like passing out papers, making deliveries to the office
• Provide opportunities for physical exercise

4. Teach organizational skills

• Provide direct instruction on organizational skills
• Provide different coloured notebooks for each subject to organize class notes
• Use an agenda book to track all assignments, tests, due dates.  Include all sports and extracurricular activities
• Make a list of required equipment for each activity on a separate page in the agenda book
• Teach the student to estimate the time a task will require, then track the time taken, using the clock or a stopwatch.  Discuss the time difference, and point out how much time the student was off-task.
• Provide a positive reinforcement programme to emphasize time on task and completion of work within the time given

5.  Communicate frequently with parents

• Keep parents informed about assignments, work to be completed, and test dates.
• Use a communication book that the student carries back and forth to home.
• Gradually increase the student’s responsibility for keeping their agenda books up-to-date
• Gradually increase the student’s responsibility for communications with parents

Environmental Strategies:

• Provide an individual work space where the student knows where all of their belongings will be
• Seat the student at the front of the class near the teacher
• Keep the student’s work space free of unnecessary materials
• Post visual cues and reminders of the schedule at their desk or workstation
• Chart or graph the student’s behaviour to show targets for improvement and rate of improvement.

Assessment Strategies:

Similar to instructional strategies, assessment strategies will:

• Manage the student’s attention through increased time and supervised breaks
• Structure and manage the task

1. Manage the student’s attention through increased time and supervised breaks

• Allow extra time for assessments
• Provide supervised breaks during the test, so the student can leave the room
• Provide a quiet place with fewer students to write tests
• Divide the test into parts and give one section at a time over the day or a period of days
• Provide prompts when needed to draw the student’s attention back to the assessment task

2. Structure and manage the task

• Provide opportunities for the student to demonstrate understanding of the material in a variety of ways, such as oral presentation, building models, and demonstrations
• Use oral testing
• Use written test formats with short answers, such as True/False, multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer
• Make assessment expectations explicit
• Provide a scoring rubric for tests that require lengthy written answers (e.g. Write 5 paragraphs of at least 4 sentences each; For each reason in favour of the argument, give an argument against it, etc.)
• Allow the student to write down the main points and to expand on them verbally
• Make a scoring rubric that allows for partial marks