How to Build a Better Attention Span
By building short focus exercises into the daily routine, teachers help students to improve their capacity to concentrate.
Your content has been saved!
Go to My Saved Content.Some learners seem naturally able to sustain concentration, while others struggle to maintain focus for even a few minutes. To many teachers, this capacity to focus can feel like a fixed trait. But research shows that even though attention spans seem to be shrinking, the ability to pay attention is a trainable skill that can be developed over time with consistent effort—and there are a number of classroom activities that can help build a better attention span by strengthening concentration like a muscle.
Starting each class with a journaling prompt can set the tone for an expectation of sustained attention. Teachers can prompt students with a reflection on the previous lesson or a question that tees up the day’s teaching, then give them five uninterrupted minutes to think and write. They may at first struggle to sustain focus for that span, but with daily practice, the journaling will become a welcome routine.
Devices like tablets and laptops are helpful tools, but they can also be a source of distraction if they aren’t used with intention. For activities that require deep thinking, asking students to agree as a group to keep devices dark while they’re engaged with the task at hand is key. This creates a shared expectation to resist distraction while working.
To treat attention like a muscle, the best way to train it is with repetitions. Focus reps are a daily practice that challenges students to concentrate on independent work for incrementally lengthened spans of time. It’s a good idea to start with five to seven minutes of focused reading, writing, or thinking, followed by a two-minute break. As the year progresses, the length of the reps can be gradually increased to the point where the class is comfortable with 25–30 minutes of uninterrupted work.
With consistency, these small routines can help strengthen concentration, push students to think more deeply, and help them to become better learners.
To learn more about the research cited in the video, read Michael I. Posner, Mary K. Rothbart, and Pascale Voelker’s paper on the cognitive development of brain networks related to attention (2016).
This video was adapted from Cathleen Beachboard’s article for Edutopia, “Attention Is Not a Trait—It’s a Teachable Skill.” Check it out for more insight into how to build up students’ attention spans in the classroom.