Getting Students to Pay Attention

As a teacher, I always had those students that would not pay attention. I had to try many different tactics to try and get them through a lesson. The rule of thumb is that the length of our lessons should be driven by the age of our students: the average age our students are in years is the average number of minutes they can maintain upper level cortex thinking during direct instruction. Our brains are wired to a stubborn timing pattern that coincides with approximately 10 minutes, meaning that every 10 minutes or so we must help shift our students' brains. I recently came across a wonderful article that gives practicle solutions to try with our students.

Stop Telling Your Students To “Pay attention!             

http://www.jensenlearning.com/news/students-to-pay-attention/brain-based-teaching#more-1009