MOVES TO FACILITATE STUDENT ATTENTION
Skillful teachers lay the groundwork for focusing student attention by system- atically incorporating the “Attention” principles and guidelines into the every- day fabric of classroom life. There are a wide range of in-the-moment moves that a teacher might use to capture, maintain, and recapture or refocus stu- dent attention. Teachers tend to need these most when a learning experience is whole-group oriented and teacher directed.
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PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | ATTENTION
Within this general class of “Attention” moves, there are five categories: (1) desisting, (2) alerting, (3) enlisting, (4) acknowledging, and (5) winning. These moves can be thought of as having affective characteristics (negative to positive) and power-sharing dynamics (authority to attraction). The skillful teacher’s repertoire for getting and keeping students on task should include at least a few moves from each of these categories. This is critical to being able to match the choice of move to what the situation warrants.
Keep in mind as we describe each of these that this list is meant to be an objec- tive list of moves teachers make that get students’ attention. In other words, we are describing every type of move we have seen or heard a teacher do that was for this purpose, but without judging the appropriateness, effectiveness, or relative merit of any individual move on the list. In order to determine the ap- propriateness of each of these moves, each teacher has to examine the context within which it is being used and its impact on the student.