Building Focusing Skills

It is so common place today for a parent to tell me that he/she believes little Johnny or little Suzy has ADD/ADHD. The child has never been diagnosed and most of the time the parent does not want the child to be medicated, so they don’t really push for a diagnosis, but they share this information with me because they see that their child has a hard time focusing and would rather play than sit still.

While I do believe there are children that are appropriately diagnosed as having ADD/ADHD, I agree that way too many children these days are over diagnosed. Having ADD/ADHD has lost the stigmatism that it used to have because so many children have been diagnosed with it. It is now common place and therefore less scary for a parent to think their child has ADD/ADHD. Again, I am saying, there are children with an appropriate diagnosis of ADD/ADHD, but most of these children are… children.

Focus skills are not just something a child is able to do by the time they are 5 years old and start school. Focus skills are learned from birth, just like everything else. There are some children that while growing up learn behaviors through seeing them done by others. If a child sees others able to focus on a task for a period of time, they mimic this ability in their play and develop their own focus skills. There are others that do not see appropriate models that are able to focus on tasks for an amount of time and therefore they learn and practice the behaviors that they see. There are other children that don’t learn through observation at all and will never learn focus skills unless they are specifically taught. All children need focus skills specifically taught to them.

Children have short focus skills when they are young because they have short memories. As their brains develop, they can be expected to focus for longer and longer amounts of time, but just as I shared in my last blog, it is important for us to know the big picture but to celebrate small accomplishments along the way.

If your child is young like my 15 month old son, I work to build his focus abilities by looking him in the eyes when I talk to him. When he sits and reads books, I compliment him. I clap for him when we play a game of ball. I celebrate the times he focuses on one task.

It’s not too late to build a student’s focusing skills at any age, even your own. For school age students, you can talk to them about what it means to focus. What does it look like? How does it make your body feel? What things should you be doing? Make a list with students and practice each piece of what it means to focus individually and all together. Remind students prior to a focusing time, especially if it is a particularly difficult time, what you discussed and practice again. In the classroom setting, walk around and praise different students for how well they are focusing and what specifically they are doing correct. Go to those students that have the most difficulty focusing first, as an early compliment might encourage them to focus a little longer than they usually do. Compliment students quietly if you don’t want to interrupt the class. Make an announcement to the class about a particular child’s well focused behavior if you see several others that are struggling and you know that won’t embarrass the child.

Your end goal expectations for each child should be the same, but your daily expectations for each student should be different. Again, one child might be able to focus for 30 minutes no problems, while another student might struggle with 5. If the student that struggles with 5 minutes is able to last 6 minutes. Take the time to make note of that with the student. Specifically praise them for their accomplishment and encourage them to keep working. They are getting better each time. “Suzy, I noticed that you have been working for 6 minutes without any distractions today. I am so proud of you. You have been working hard to learn to focus. I bet tomorrow you can focus for 7 minutes!”

It’s important to note that students often have setbacks. They might have a bad day. These setbacks can affect them in different ways. Sometimes students are able to start fresh the next day and focus for 6 minutes, while other students allow these setbacks to affect their confidence. If this is the case, it’s ok to take a few steps back to build that confidence level again. If they’re able to focus for 3 minutes today, praise them for continuing to try. When you build their confidence level back up they will quickly surpass what they were doing before.

Even children that have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD will benefit from this technique. Just because they are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, doesn’t mean they can’t pay attention. It just means, they need to be taught some specific strategies that can help them redirect their focus to what they need to do. No disability should be used an excuse.

Teacher Jen

Using Praise to develop Confidence and Academic Motivation

Everyone knows that teachers need to have high expectations and that is true, but sometimes we teachers look at the big picture and we want our students to do so to. For young students and even older ones this is a skill that takes a long time to develop. What seems so natural for use is almost impossible for our students. They are not able to take such broad goals and break them down into step by step processes to help them reach their goals. This is what we need to do for them.

We need to share these great goals with our students, and while those goals are important for them to know about, they should not be what the student focuses on. Instead, we need to break down the goals for them into step by step processes or smaller goals that we can celebrate along the way. For younger students, we should do this for them in a way that will model what they will learn to do later. As students mature, include them in the process of making their own goals and designing their own paths to reach their goals for themselves.

Reaching goals frequently and celebrating these successful through genuine affirmation can quickly build a child’s self confidence in different areas they may not be able to see what they are able to do and take pride in that.

Being celebrated is fun. It makes you feel good on the inside to know you are good at something. That in itself is a big motivator for students. So creating small reachable goals that students can reach motivates children to learn quickly the skill or information they are working on compared to working toward the end goal which may take all year to learn. While students are making progress, they often get frustrated and give up because the end goal seems so untouchable. An example of this will be for students to be able to read all 220 dolch words. For a kindergartener just learning to read, the teacher may make her goal to be able to read 2 words by the end of the week. If the student is able to reach that goal, make a big deal out of it! “I am so proud of you!” is a very powerful sentence to share with students, but don’t stop there. Be specific about what you are proud of, “I am so proud of you. You read 2 words this week. You are learning to read fast. Do you think you can learn 2 more words next week?” Ask the student to buy into the next small goal based on how quickly they are learning them. It might be appropriate to ask another kindergartener to buy into a goal of learning 5 words in a week. It all goes back to differentiation.

I hope you see the successes in your students and celebrate them. Encourage them to celebrate one another. They will learn it quickly through your model as praising others can make you feel as good as receiving a compliment from others. Tune into my next blog, as I continue this discussion on praising to improve focus skills.

Teacher Jen

Using External Rewards

There’s always some controversy of whether to give kids external rewards for good behavior or learning something new. I have given stickers and candy (occasionally) as rewards, but the most powerful reward you can give a child is the feeling of worth in your eyes. Even those really tough kids that would never admit it need this, even more so than other students. For them, they may have never received this from others around them or it was conditional and they were burned too many times to let down their guard and let you in. Keep trying, stay genuine, and while you may not preserver immediately you may just break down the wall enough for them to let someone in later. For these tough cases, many times I will attach an external reward that is something they enjoy with the praise. They need it to connect the good feels of the external reward with the words.

Candy is really my least favorite external reward. Candy tastes good and kids already like it, but connecting it to powerful words of praise make one feel that much better about themselves when they eat it. With the obesity problem in this country, I don’t feel that is the message we need to send to young children. I would encourage you not to you candy at all, but it can be used in a responsible manner. In my classroom, I used candy for as manipulatives during a lesson and then allowed students to eat a small number after the lesson was completed if they were well behaved during the lesson. During the holidays, we might play an academic game and at the end the winner received candy, but only one piece to show that candy can be enjoyed in moderation. For example, on Halloween, a winner might get one candy corn and for Valentine’s Day, a winner might get one candy heart, etc. I never gave my students a whole bag of candy as a reward in my class.

There are so many better options of external rewards students can be given that produce as much emotion as candy does, you just have to know what will work for each student. As with anything in teaching, it’s trial and error. Below is a list of fun, free, or cheap suggestions.

1.       A coloring page from a coloring book

2.       A bookmark – Check out the FREE Color-me bookmarks in my TpT Store! CLICK HERE!

3.       Stickers – I had children collect small stickers on a sticker chart. When they filled their chart, they earned a prize from the treasure box.

4.       Treasure box prizes – small toys, pencils, erasers, etc. Have parents donate old fast food meal toys.

5.       Lunch with the teacher

6.       5 minutes extra of recess time

7.       A call home to a parent – You can even call and have the child read to the parent over the phone or do a few math facts to them if they have time. I would suggest talking with the parent prior to making this a reward to make sure they can be available if they are working.

8.       Monopoly type money or Class bucks collected by students in order to purchase a reward of their choosing at a later date.

9.       A special classroom job (Line Leader, Electrician (turns the lights off), Teacher Assistant, etc)

10.   Game time – allow student to pick a friend to play a board game with.

There are so many more, but again these are external rewards and while they have their place, you want to wean students away from the need of such awards to more internal rewards. To do that, make sure you connect the transfer of one of these external awards with genuine verbal approval that specifically denotes what the child improved on or did well.

In my next blog, I will talk about the how to use praise to develop confidence and academic enjoyment.

Teacher Jen