Let's Celebrate Teacher's Day with these 6 Tips to Enhance Concentration

After most of the world has switched to home schooling or online classes at some point this year, all those tired, busy or even frustrated parents (yes, we know that you can’t possibly remember those math equations you did in third grade), have started to remember just how important and challenging being a teacher really is.

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During these even more difficult times, we want to take a moment and show our gratitude, appreciation and support for every single one of you warm-hearted, strong and wise teachers. And if you are one of the lucky ones who get to go back to regular school, we thought we’d give you a hand.

Spending every day in school, probably even with masks on might be exhausting for children and teachers alike.

Therefore, we have prepared a short list with ideas to keep your class busy and engaged:

1. Begin the lesson with an interesting fact,

      Did you know that the brain disengages when it thinks it already knows something? One way to jump-start the brain out of its slumbering state is to give it startling or interesting information that it knows it … doesn’t know. Besides waking up the brain and getting it ready to engage in the rest of the lesson, these facts also give the students fun ammunition to use against the adults in their life as a way to show off their smarts.

2. Encourage connections that are meaningful and relevant While having your own enthusiasm for a topic is a good start, it isn’t enough to keep the students engaged in the long term. Instead, you need a way to bring them into that enthusiasm. One way to do this is to make it relevant and meaningful to them.

Ask the students questions: Have you ever …? How would you feel if …? Incorporate areas of student interests into the lessons. With writing, grammar, spelling, and reading, you can create sentences and other content around things they like.

As an example, you could have your students try to find all the nouns in sentences like this: Spider-Man shot out his web and pinned the bad guy against the wall.

3. Plan for short attention spans Students, especially younger ones, have a relatively short attention span. Studies suggest that:

• Kindergarteners (ages five and six) are able to focus on an interesting task for 10–30 minutes.
• First-grade students (ages six and seven) can focus for 12–35 minutes.
• Second-grade students (ages seven and eight) can focus for 14–40 minutes.

And so on. With teaching, it’s better to keep the lower number in mind when planning and executing your lessons. To keep the students engaged, plan several short activities that will aid you in teaching and reinforcing the lesson and will keep the minds of the students moving.

4. Turn lessons into games Students learn best and are most engaged when they are having fun. With this concept in mind, more attention has been given to the benefits of playing games in the classroom.
5. Turn lessons into stories Storytelling is another highly engaging strategy to use in the classroom. This practice, which has been around since the beginning of history as we know it, engages both the emotional and logical areas of the brain. With multiple areas of the brain being activated, the hearer is better able to engage with and remember the information embedded within the story.
6. Use tools Sitting in the classroom for long hours and listening to what’s written in the book can get monotonous and make the kids bored or drowsy. A well-designed classroom with flexible seating arrangements, especially wobble chairs, help the child remain active physically while focusing his mind on the lesson.

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Conclusion Teachers have the ability to shape leaders of the future in the best way for society to build positive and inspired future generations and therefore design society, both on a local and global scale. In reality, teachers have the most important job in the world. Those who have an impact on the children of society have the power to change lives. Not just for those children themselves, but for the lives of us all.