Monica is a different sort of child.
Although she also engages in frequent off-task behavior, enlisting moves seem to overstimulate her. Mrs. T explains, “It’s as if she interprets enlisting and winning moves as ‘I want to be your friend’ or ‘I want to play’ messages from me. She gets carried away with the interaction and focuses too much on me.” While she looks for other ways and other opportunities to meet this need for close- ness that Monica seems to have during work times, Mrs. T uses midrange desisting and alerting moves (reminding, the look, pre-alerts) consistently, and successfully, with Monica when she’s off task.
Individual students, with different needs, require different moves, and skillful teach- ers deliberately match their moves to students. Some experienced teachers are intui- tive about the way they differentiate these moves across their students, and they are known as effective classroom managers. They may not be able to explain why they choose what they do. They just seem to know that they have it right. Perhaps, it is a subconscious acuteness they have at matching attention moves to various students.
Whether or not they have this intuitive flair, all teachers can benefit from re- flecting on the patterns of inattention among their students and examining them in relation to the patterns of moves they seem to be making in response. They may discover that they are overlooking part of their available repertoire because they get so irritated with Adam, or that the repertoire could be en- larged, or that they could do better matching if they looked for the reason be- hind the inattention. Talking about a student (or a group) with a colleague us- ing the Attention Continuum can be a highly engaging and productive activity.
Individual students with different needs require different moves, and skillful teachers deliberately match their moves to students.
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R58
PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | ATTENTION
CHAPTER QUICK GUIDE
Preconditions for Student Attention:
p Frame each learning experience for students.
p Use a range of auditory, visual, and kinesthetic explanatory devices when presenting information.
p Pay attention to the feeling tone of the learning experience and mood of the students, and adjust where necessary.
p Consider pre-assessment to determine where students are currently in relation to where you want them to be by the end of the lesson, and design for differences in student readiness.
p Pause regularly and periodically to have students process what they are taking in before adding more information.
p Plan for at least two minutes of physical movement of some kind within every 20 to 40 minutes of sitting time.
p Laugh with your students, and pay attention to the emotional climate in the room.
The Attention Repertoire:
1. Desisting
2. Alerting
3. Enlisting
4. Acknowledging
5. Winning
To check your knowledge about Attention, see the exercises on The Skillful Teacher website at www.RBTeach.com/TST7.
6. Momentum
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R 59
PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | MOMENTUM
Management Momentum
Management:
Momentum
The concept of “Momentum” pertains to the smooth, ongoing flow of events in the classroom (Kounin, 1970). Teaching is full of interruptions to momentum. When these interruptions occur, students’ concentra- tion is broken, and they are distracted or prevented from becoming involved in learning activities. They experience downtime—time spent waiting for things to get ready, get started, or get organized. When Momentum is not maintained, students become bored or look for things to do, potentially filling their time by daydreaming or engaging in disruptive behavior. When Momentum is ef- fectively maintained, students experience smooth and rapid transitions from one event to another. Movement of students and equipment happens without bottlenecks, traffic jams, conflicts, arguments, or pushing and shoving. In this chapter, we examine the behaviors teachers perform to manage Momentum and keep things moving along in the classroom.