Attention is limited and is all too easily lost. There will be times when it is hard for children to focus.
The main limitations for a pupil when it comes to maintaining attention include:
- Capacity: a child’s capacity to focus it is not large and pupils are not able to process everything they sense at one time.
- Distraction: These can be self imposed by the child, or unwittingly by the class teacher.
- Mental Effort: To maintain attention requires sufficient mental effort. Research shows that the longer tasks lasts, the more likely effort will diminish and so will need to be renewed in order to maintain our attention.
Here are some strategies that can be used to help improve attention and ensure the desired information is being filtered by pupils in order to be processed to their working memory.
Use of timers and time bonded tasks can help Attention_use of timers