Neurologist and former teacher Judy Willis explains how techniques such as walking backwards and changing the furniture in your classroom can motivate students on the first day back of term.
As the holidays come to an end, thoughts of students and lesson plans replace time spent indulging in puddings and turkey. But teachers know all too well that it’s challenging enough to motivate a class on a Monday morning after a weekend, nevermind after a longer break. To reignite energy levels this January here are my tips as a neurologist and former teacher:
What gets the brain’s attention?
All learning starts as information perceived by the five senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. There are also millions of sensory nerve endings throughout the skin, muscles and internal organs. But the brain is only able to process about 1% of this information and it gives priority to certain things.
With the help of brain imaging, we can see that the sensory information that gets priority is that which helps mammals survive. This tends to be information that is unexpected – our attention filter first takes in sensory information about change and novelty.
On the first day back get your class to share stories
After a break, there is a higher than normal amount of new sensory information competing for access to the brain. Students have not seen each other for a while and the novelty of returning to school is enhanced by their interest in what classmates did during the holidays.
So beginning the first day back by returning immediately to routine is unlikely to get your students’ attention and can cause bad behavior and inattention. But if you know that a child’s brain is programmed to be curious about new experiences and what friends have done, you can use it to promote important qualities.
Students are likely to want to tell their class about what they got for Christmas or a trip they’ve been on. Tell them they can do this but only if they also share something that they did for others or generous acts that they saw or heard about.
Get class attention through curiosity
It’s essential that students remember the information you teach them. For this to happen, you can use strategies to make sure the sensory information you provide (through what you say, show, do or have them experience through physical movement) gets through their attention filters.
Once students have had the chance to satisfy their curiosity about classmates, you can redirect their focus to classroom instruction by starting with sensory input that is most likely to get through the attention filter. Through neuroimaging research, we know the types of novelty or change that get attention priority include movement, curious objects, pictures, videos, unexpected class visitors or speakers, changes of colour and things you do that are unusual. So why not wear something unusual? Have music playing when children enter class, open with a dynamic video clip, a curious picture, or an optical illusion?
Here are some other suggestions:
What you say (or don’t say). A sudden mid-sentence silence is a curiosity the attention filter wants to know more about. A suspenseful pause in your speech before saying something important increases alertness and memory of what you will say or do next.
Change the furniture arrangement. Or put up photos of last year’s students doing an activity your students will be doing in the unit they are beginning, light a candle, put a new exciting poster relating to the new unit under the one that has been hanging and when you walk by, “inadvertently” bump into the wall so the old one falls down and the new one is suddenly revealed.
Get moving. Since movement gets high priority, you can move in an unexpected way such as doing what you usually do (handing out papers or posting information on the walls) while walking backwards. That could lead to a lesson about negative numbers, negative electric charges, going “back” in history, or the past tense of verbs.
Rotate techniques, lest the unexpected become expected. Greet students at the door with a riddle or a note card with a vocabulary word. They can seek their new seats by looking for the table with the note card that has the riddle answer or the definition of their word.
Good teachers are highly responsive to their students’ moods and needs. Knowing a bit of the neuroscience can help you prepare for times when it’s harder to get your students’ attention. I recall a poster that read: “A Mind Stretched Will Never Revert to its Original Size.” That mind stretching is what teachers do. Using strategies to first captivate their attention will hook into their brains’ intake programing, stimulate their curiosity, and sustain the attentive focus needed to turn information into knowledge.
