“Concentration is about commitment and dedication to yourself. Keep your focus on your own goals and what’s important to you, rather than distractions from outside sources.” – Vania Mendez.
For effective teaching and learning, making students well-concentrated in the classroom holds the utmost importance. Students with proper concentration skills listen to the teachers actively, receive a quality understanding of the curriculum, and stay engaged in the classes. However, along with well-focused students, there are many with short attention spans. Let us discuss a complete set of tips that teachers can follow to enhance concentration skills and ensure students’ academic, social, and professional growth and development.
How teachers can make students more concentrated in classes
1. Using multimedia tools to teach
Only textbook teaching makes classes monotonous and boring. Also, understanding the theoretical and applicative subjects from the guides and books becomes difficult for many. Relating less to the content makes students less concentrated in the classes. Today teaching and learning are no longer limited to conventional methods, therefore teachers should also switch to technology. By using online teaching apps and sites, teachers can access several audiovisual tools like educational videos, modules, demonstrations, picture cards, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, and animations. With the help of visualization, students tend to understand the concepts better, which quickly makes learning more fun and engaging for all.
2. Ask students to maintain regularity with the classes
By being irregular in the classes, students not only miss the topics being taught on that particular day but also the understanding of further lessons is also affected. They relate and connect less with what is being discussed in class. This can affect students’ interest, class performance, and concentration level too. To avoid this from happening further, must ask your students to maintain regularity in classes as much as possible. By using LMS portals, teachers can keep digital records of students’ attendance, and percentages and enhance their teaching and time management skills respectively.
3. Conducting active learning practices
Only teachers speaking and students simply listening in the classroom is least effective. This makes students bored and distracted very easily. Teachers should try to make students more active and involved in the class. To do so, conducting active learning practices is very helpful. Active learning ensures that students do something more than being mere listeners. Group discussions, recitations, question-answer rounds, presentations, debates, etc are some of the activities that can be conducted in this regard. By using a school learning management system, teachers can keep digital records of students’ class performance, who all are participating well, who all are lagging, and give constructive feedback accordingly.
4. Give breaks
There are several academic subjects that students are taught every day. Attending back-to-back lectures can be very exhausting for students. This can make students less concentrated in the classes and also affect their understanding and participation. Therefore teachers must give students break time. Teachers should plan and prepare classes in such a way that break time can be managed. Even a short break of fifteen to twenty minutes of duration is enough for students to re-energize themselves for further classes. Teachers during this break time can relax a bit or prepare for further classes.
5. Ask students to develop healthy lifestyle habits
One of the major reasons behind students being less attentive in class is lack of sleep. Using phones and other technical gadgets, social media, and watching movies till late at night affects the sleep cycle of students. This makes students feel sleepy in the classroom. With lack of sleep comes laziness, poor stamina, frustration, and no interest in learning. Teachers must acknowledge students in this regard. Ask them to opt for healthy lifestyle habits that include going to bed on time, so that students wake up early with an active mind and body. This makes students more enthusiastic, engaged, and attentive in the classroom.
6. Divide the lessons
Many lessons in our textbooks are detailed, theoretical, and lengthy. Teaching the whole lesson in one go, or reading out too much theory in a single day can make students feel bored as well as exhausted. And this further affects their concentration level too. To overcome this problem, teachers should follow fragmentation which means dividing the lessons into moderate or smaller sections. Now teaching small portions every day makes content digestible and more understandable to the learners.
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Conclusion
Concentrating and being focused in the classroom is very important for all students. By following the above-mentioned tips, teachers can make students more attentive and learn specifically in class. This help teachers develop a well-engaged and enjoyable learning environment respectively.