Did you know: For adults real attention span for one type of activity is about 15 minutes? For people younger than 15, real attention span for one type of activity is their age in minutes.
Students will attend to and therefore remember better, activities which:
- Involve them in topic-relevant talking
- Have plenty of variety and choice
- Are fun, colourful, exciting, startling, dramatic
- Provide pleasurable experiences or thoughts
- Are relevant to their present needs or future goals
- Provide real or sensory experiences
- Provide answers to their own questions
- Have time-spans which are short and have impact
- Fit into context from their own past experiences
What do brain-friendly teachers do to guarantee attention?
- They plan lessons so that there is a number of starts and finishes e.g. for a 1 hour lesson, 4 activities which take less than 15 minutes each.
- Remember, each segment needs a clear beginning and ending to help students install and retain strong memories of content and process
- Signal these segments in lesson overviews to imprint on the brain and to assist students in remaining task-focused!
Tips taken from Teaching to Learn by Christine Ward
