Good morning and Happy New Month to all the Teachers and Parents out there.
Today is Friday 1st May, 2020 and I'0 pleased to welcome you to my blog and to the class.
I wish to buttress further on another factor that can hamper learning outcome in our schools. I will also like to discuss few tips that could help you out in case you're having similar issue in your school or home.
Background information
I was in my office some months ago and one of my teacher came with complain that some of the pupils sleep on her while she was teaching. She couldn't help but said that she doesn't know what to do because even when she tells them to stand, they still dose-off while standing.
Well, I could tell from the teacher's voice that she was worried or tired about this occurrence of learners sleeping on her while she teaches.
What is the way forward then?
I was concerned about the teacher's complain, so I asked her if she understood the concept of attention span in learners; and from her response, I noticed that it was obvious that she didn't have adequate information about it.
Owing to her lime knowledge about attention span among the pupils, I sat her down and did a quick run of what the concept entails.
What is attention span?
Attention span is the duration of which a learner pays attention to a teacher in order to grab using information i.e learning output. This is also the period which the learner listens carefully to the teacher. It's also a time that child looks/focuses at the teacher to understand what such teacher is talking about.
Note importantly that attention span is measured using time, as such it has a direct correlation with the child's age. Thus, younger learners who fall between the age of two to three years have a little attention span which if measured is not up to 10 mins as compared to older learners of 6 to 10 years whose span could up to 30 minutes.
Yeah, you heard me right, pupils who fall under this level or stage can give you a bit stress to get their attention.
So what then can the teacher do if the child's attention span is that low?
It's quite simple, you need to expand or sustain the attention span by capturing their interest using the few tips I would highlight below.
- Diversify your teaching method: Play way, role play is much useful at this point.
- Repeat the content of the lesson for about three to five times. E.g "Letter Aa sounds / begins the word ANT." Let the pupils repeat this for two or three times using different tone.
- Ask the pupils to change their positions: the learners can stand for about 30 seconds, then you ask them to sit.
- Engage the learners using the Q/A skill: here the teacher can throw questions to the pupils randomly and reiterate any answer given by the pupils even when it's not very correctly. When a child hear you using his/her point being buttressed, it gives them sense of belonging.
- Finally, the teacher can take the pupils out from the class for outside the class learning. Believe me this the best thing learners long for.
Conclusion
After doing a 5 minutes theoretical framework with the teacher, I went with her to do a 30 minutes practical in her class and I was really glad to here her come back to inform me that she had learnt a lot that school didn't take time to explain.
Please note that the pictures used in the post are pupils and teachers in the school where I serve as Head Teacher. It was captured with my camera without their knowledge. So observe them closely, there are some hidden lessons from it
I am 
I will be glad to hear from you, ask me questions about this seminar and I will respond ASAP.