ATTENTION GRABBERS

Let’s imagine this regular scenario which we teachers are already used to.

You get into your classroom to meet your students shouting at the top of their voices. They were so engrossed in their noise making that it was hard to get their attention by screaming “stop making noise”.

You make extra effort to get their attention but only succeeded in getting the noise reduced, though not to the level you would have loved to have it.

You proceed to your lesson presentation, but it is quite obvious they are not listening. Some teachers in order to handle the situation and get the children listen, they resort to beating which is clearly not a good action to take.

Attention grabbers are activities used to control the rowdiness in class and get the attention of students.

The following attention grabbers have been effective in getting students focused, active and concentrated in class.

• Songs– Not all songs should be used as an attention grabber. Some songs help students relax and focus on the work, while some might just aggravate the noise. Pinterest is an excellent search engine that teachers can use in sourcing for the perfect attention grabber song. There are call and response songs that will keep children energised and focused. Just put in the right keyword and make your choice.

• Story– Children loves stories, especially when it’s a good one or even funny. When next you’re having a hard time getting the attention of your students, tell them a story. It does not have to be a perfect story. Just something fictional or real but emphasis should be placed on it been short because you don’t want to spend the whole lesson period telling a story.

• Stare– This works for me all the time. For this to be effective, you must have been using it for a while in class so your students understand what each stare mean. I remember teaching this child for the first time and I had to use the angry stare, she looked at me and started laughing because according to her “I looked funny”. As an attention grabber, I give the child making the loudest noise an angry stare and to make it more effective, I ask the child to stand up or give a mild punishment which usually is delaying the child from writing. Children hate been the last to submit so I use that to my advantage.

• Counting 1 to 10– Prior to the day you want to use this, you have to inform your students that when you start counting they are to be on their seats before the count of 10 because failure to do so would attract (insert a fair punishment) standing for some minutes, subtracting marks from their total mark, or any other light punishment. When I was teaching preschoolers, I reduced my counting to 1,2 and 3. You can further start your teaching by counting this way “Teaching in 1, Teaching in 2, Teaching in 3”

• Hands rule– The hand rule is communication with the use of the fingers. After controlling the noise, in order to control the noise that might arise when I start presenting the lesson for the day, I introduce the hands rule. We make use of our five fingers and each finger has its own meaning. They are prohibited from speaking unless with the use of their fingers. Any other word aside the ones represented by their fingers are to be left unsaid until after the class.

• Positive Reinforcements– Here you reward students who are well behaved. The reward does not have to be in monetary form. It can be extra marks, use of words (excellent, student of the day), special privilege or any form of reward you wish to use. It is proven that when a behaviour is reinforced positively, it increases the likeliness of its reoccurrence and also reduces the reoccurrence of the opposing behaviours because every child likes to be rewarded.

Other attention grabbers that can be used are short test, quick exercise, and direct questions.

Are there other attention grabbers you use in your classroom, notify us in the comment section as I am sure teachers would love to adopt them.

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