Did you know that the first few minutes of class is the only time a student listens to their teacher? A student listens to a 60-90 minute lectures from classroom to classroom for 200 school days. But a student cannot focus their attention for that long so they ended up losing their attention somewhere else. Someday, this may be a trouble to their parents. Students lacking concentration may cause failure in planning for their future.
Attention refers to the state of applying the mind into specific information currently seen in our surroundings. W. James defines attention as the clasp possession of the mind which can do several coincidentally possible objects or train of thoughts. It also suggests recession from some things in order to handle with others effectively (Cherry, n.d.).
According to Dufault (2013), the classes in most universities took 50-90 minutes long which is considerably longer than the attention span of an archetypal student. The attention of students widely differs from others and their attention quality relies on their emotion, the time of day and several other factors. It is believed that the attention span of students ends at the headmost 10-15 minutes of every lecture. But no corroboration was found to uphold the belief.
A 1976 study conducted by two Indiana University professors proves that assorting a teacher’s lectures and having a 3-5 minute interval would regain the students’ attention. The study was executed long before the era of texting and social networks so the immediate generation of students have even shorter attention and more impaired by distractions. The professors conducted another study in 1985 in which they tested the students’ memory of reminiscing facts from a 20 minute lecture. T...
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A student seeking better retention of material taught in the class-room environment may employ the Cornell note-taking method. With such a method, the three sections of the note-taking outline can aid the student’s retention by improving encoding. For a student to be able to retain oncoming material, they first must be able to encode, as in interpret and internalize, oncoming material (Faber, Morris, & Lieberman, 2000). The note-taking section forces the student to use elaborative rehearsal which helps material reach long-term storage. The cue section uses recoding to deepen the material’s encoding. And the summary section makes the student reprocess what they’ve written down to prolong its retention. As these sections must be filled out separately, the student is expected to return to the notes at least three times in a twenty-four hour period. This immediacy in review may help the student retain the material to a greater extent. Thus, the process can serve as a vantage point for learning with Cornell note-taking as it encourages retention by improving encoding during the process of note-taking and guaranteeing review of the material in a first twenty four hours.
As I wearily sat in my seat, writing an essay on the importance of electricity in the modern world, I caught myself glancing repeatedly at the clock that was so carefully perched above the teacher’s desk. “Ten minutes, only ten more minutes left until school is over and I get to go home!” I told myself. In most schools, the average school day is about eight hours long. Eight hours of continuously sitting in a chair taking notes during lectures, doing classwork, projects, etc. During these eight hours of school, students deserve a short, outdoor break in which they can isolate themselves from the stress of working all day and just relax. Studies have shown that people who take short breaks throughout the day to do light, outdoor breaks are more productive than those who do not. A short, outdoor break will benefit students due to the fact that students will have time to relax; students will be able to focus more, concentrate, and be more productive; and teachers will have more time to prepare for the next class coming.
Students are becoming more distracted in class because of technology resulting them to do poorly in education. In the story, “New Class(room) War: Teacher Versus Technology” by Samuel Freedman is about a teacher name Ali Nazemi that created a policy regarding no technology because the students are not paying attention anymore in class. Freedman’s states that, “Their perpetual war of attrition with defiantly inattentive students has escalated from the quaint pursuits of pigtail-pulling, spitball-lobbing and notebook-doodling to a high-tech arsenal of laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like”
For some students, the time they have in the classroom is not enough for them to grasp the topic. While teachers usually offer a period for students to see them for extra help, some students do not have time for this. Most students have commitments outside of the classroom, such as m...
Preschoolers can’t concentrate on an activity for a long time. They can't remain attentive for more than three or four minutes on a particular matter. Teaches should plan methods, through which, they can increase this time span in a periodic way rather than attempting for a sudden increase.
More courses should try to incorporate 5 minutes of the class to get students focused and ready to learn. Sometimes students are too preoccupied with other problems that they do not focus on the present moment; making them less likely to focus on the course.
‘We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information… And so we ask the Internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive.’ (133-4) Reduced attention-spans of serious consequences. Without being able to think long and hard on a certain subject, this may revert to academic failure or more course content reduction, in an effort to keep the school system afloat. It is very likely that the Net is the ‘most powerful mind-altering technology’. (116) With the fragmentation of thoughts, schools and eventually even governments will be forced to reform their way of thinking. The Internet rewires your brain to the ‘new normal’. Being homeschooled and using the Internet for research and classes, as well as acting as an editor for some people, I found that the more I use it, the more my ability to concentrate is reduced. During the summer, I hardly used the Internet at all, and happily reread Ivanhoe and Shakespeare without having to pause. Now, when I use it for classes again, I find that even reading familiar books such as Jane Eyre have become more tedious, and I am
During the treatment phases of the study, teacher attention was provided to these students on a 5-minute fixed-time schedule. Between intervals, the teacher behaved in her typical manner. The results of the study indicated that a fixed-time schedule of teacher attention was effective in decreasing student’s off-task and disruptive behavior, while increasing student’s on-task behavior (Riley, et al, 2011).
Adult learning environments are quite different in the corporate world vs. an educational setting. Both can be in found in a lecture hall settings and both can have distracted learners; however there are ...
Klein, Joseph. (September 2001). “Attention, Scholastic Achievement and Timing of Lessons.” Scandinavian Journal of Education Research. Vol. 45, Issue 3, p 301.
Studies have shown that many college students are not able to handle the stress while in school, which hinders the ability for the brain to act in a normal way (Shahrokh and Hales, 2003). If a person is unable to deal with the stress that one is being faced with, it will have negative consequences in terms of causing several psychological disorders (Canby et al., 2014). Entering post-secondary education is a completely new environment for students, as it can be tough for many to adjust to the new surroundings. There are many factors that cause stress when students enter college, as it can include having the ability to deal with lower marks (Struthers et al., 2000) and having to create a new social life. Once and if a social life is established, it can cause more stress among students because it can lead into peer pressure that results in risky behavior. In particular, peer pressure can cause alcoholism or drug abuse (Seiffge-Krenke, 1990) or it can also cause unprotected sex. Not only does stress revolve around peer-pressure, but it can also be caused by headaches and lack of energy. If a student is constantly staying up late to finish assignments or to study, it can cause headaches from the lack of sleep; thus causing stress. With all the given factors, it can be hard to overcome these external factors which can ultimately lead to stress among
Nowadays, stress is a major burden in the daily life of the average student, and it seems harder and harder to tackle it and eliminate all the factors that cause it. Students find it hard to concentrate on studying since there are a lot of deadlines and exams causing additional pressure. Stress in the form of anxiety and worry about past or future study-related experiences disturbs one’s well-being and students are not doing well anymore (Schutz & Davis, 2000).
Attention is defined as “notice taken of someone or something; the regarding of someone or something as interesting or important”.
The class in which the observations took place was a Year One and Two class with twenty six pupils in the class. Adults within the class were the Teacher, one Teaching Assistant with the occasional help of a Special Needs Assistant. Confidentiality is important within the classroom setting therefore to respect the individuals own confidentiality they will be known as Child J throughout this assignment. Child J is a male aged five years and three months. It was decided that the observations of the individual would be about concentration, as the Teacher was concerned that J does not have the ability to concentrate for more than five minutes at a time. The observations will be noted and taken further if it is felt that it will be beneficial to the child’s education.
Imagine sitting in a class, completely bored out of your mind. This is not difficult considering everyone has taken a class like this somewhere along the road of their education. Not every class can be exciting and we should know that. Now imagine every class is of this level, with no “break”, or elective, classes incorporated into your day. Although this may not apply to all private schools, there are many that focus on specific topics. So even though the...