Paying Attention and Engaging
Welcome to the main page for the Paying Attention and Engaging module. This module is about supporting students to re-engage their attention, and contains lots of ideas about things you and the student can use to help them get back to the task at hand when their mind wanders off.
Browse and select the strategies in this module below:
This strategy will support the student to know what is happening each day, or in the immediate future. It can be tailored to the student’s needs and contains some science around why it is important know what to expect of the day. This can reduce anxiety
This strategy is about creating and using a visual guide for the student to indicate their emotional state, and to guide you and them on how to increase or decrease their energy appropriately. We think it is useful for several modules in this toolkit. This strategy can be used with the whole class or the toolkit student individually
This strategy is about supporting the child to understand their feelings about a problem or task and helping them to find a reaction that is appropriate
This is a classroom activity to support the student to understand that everyone needs different things to help them be their best self, and that it’s normal (and not a punishment) for them to use tools to support them at school. It involves making stories about tricky situations
This strategy provides a range of ideas to help students keep track of time during the lesson or school day, as well as helping you remember to use these with them
This strategy is to support you to give the toolkit student more positive feedback. It requires you to think positively about changes that you can make too!
This strategy is about supporting your student by breaking tasks and activities up into smaller chunks. Children who struggle to pay attention do better when they have less to remember at any one time.
This strategy is to support the child to extend their abilities over time, for example being able to focus for longer. It works by breaking down goals into small steps, then building up from these smaller steps to larger successes
This strategy is about scaffolding the student to use a range of
strategies that can help them focus. The student will create a box of tricks
full of ideas, which they can then choose from to help with the task that they
need to achieve in class