Attention Span
Do you have any suggestions regarding students who come to class tired?
Denise,
Good strategies to keep the level of engagement high. Thanks for sharing them.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Keep the class moving. Have some activites for each of them to do that has something to do with the class. Move people around the room to get a new focuse.
Perhaps, discussion groups could be helpful. Majority of evening students are adults with different backgrounds, so they could provide important inputs on given topics from their personal experiences. At the same time, they would make classroom more " alive".
Heather,
I teach nights as well. I teach from 4 until 10 pm so I can really appreciate where you are coming from in terms of working to keep your students engaged. We have to change the pace and offer variety if we are going to keep them focused throughout the evening.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Because I teach night classes this is a common problem. I try to give them as much hands on and interactive discussion as the subject allows and sometimes we take two short breaks instead of a 1 longer one.
Carrie,
Good strategies. I teach from 4 until 10 pm so I can relate to your points. It takes a lot of instructional planning to keep the students engaged throughout the evening and acquiring the needed content and skills.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Getting the class actively involved works of course but also drawing a connection to real life helps. My courses are at night so my students are ALWAYS tired. The course I teach is nutrition so I find ways of either asking them to look at their juice, coffee, soda that is in their hand and draw connections to real life situations. Especially with nutrition, they perk up and become horrified with what they learn. Usually when I see them drifting off when I'm talking about the science heavy aspects, I try my best to bring in the real life. It helps for sure.
N.,
Make the class active. Use a lot of movement strategies for learning. Change the pace of the class about every 20 minutes. Keep the students engaged so they can't zone out during class sessions.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
I've found that any activity involving student participation will help increase attention spans.
