Keep Students’ Attention

When students do meaningful work at the beginning of class, it activates their current understanding so that they can prepare to trace the development of (i.e., attend to) their thinking as they learn more. This also helps orient them to the lecture that is coming because it gives them a reason to listen to what that lecture will reveal and prepares them to make connections across ideas.  

Example: The Muddiest Point is a technique designed to help students recognize and articulate points of confusion. Using this strategy at the very beginning of class helps you assess students’ current understanding and prepares them to listen for answers to their questions. This technique has two steps:  

1. Before class begins, give students 2-3 minutes to write in response to one of the following prompts: 
   • What are the three muddiest (i.e., most confusing) points from the reading or homework you did for today’s class?  
   • What are three questions from the reading or homework that you would like to have answered in today’s class? 
2. Ask students to share their ideas with a partner or small group, and then ask groups to share some of their questions or confusions and write those on the board. Students can revisit their muddiest points during or at the end of class to see if their points of confusion have been clarified.

Pausing a lecture to have students do meaningful work during class requires them to pay attention to how their thinking is changing. Such work keeps students focused on the connections between their thinking and what they are learning from the lecture.  

Example: Directed paraphrasing is a technique designed to help students begin articulating new ideas for themselves by imagining how they would communicate them to others. This helps students attend to gaps in their thinking and lets you assess their progress. This technique has two steps:  

1. During class, after you’ve explained a challenging concept, ask students to imagine that their aunt is going to call them after class and will be very interested in what they learned today. (She isn’t going to let them get off the phone until they are able to clearly explain the concept in language that she can understand!) Have them write a 1-sentence paraphrase of the challenging concept they have just been learning without disciplinary jargon.  
    
2. After students have written their paraphrases, ask them to share them in pairs or small groups. Ask the groups to share out the best paraphrases they heard and compare them. Students can revisit their paraphrases at the end of class to see if their thinking still holds up. You might choose to collect their written work and quickly review it for an informal assessment of student learning.  

When students do the work of “summing up” or pulling together the big ideas from a class, they begin to place what they’re learning into the broader context of the work they will do next when they read, do homework, or prepare part of an assignment. This strengthens their attention to what has happened in class and how it relates to what will happen in the course.  

Example: A Minute Paper is a technique designed to help students identify and articulate what is important and begin to make connections across the big ideas that have been the focus of a class period. Using this strategy at the end of class helps students to think about the big picture of a class meeting and isolate the most important takeaways. This technique has two steps:  

1. At the end of class, have students write down their response to these questions:  
   • What is the most important thing I learned from today’s lecture?  
   • How will I use what I’ve learned to help me on the upcoming class assignment/test/project?  
2. If time permits, have students share their minute papers in small groups and compare their big takeaways. Alternately, you can collect these minute papers and review them for an informal assessment of student learning.  

Having students do meaningful work at any point of a class meeting increases attention, but the positive effects can be increased by integrating multiple moments of student work during a given class with little effort on our part.  

Example: Prediction activities are designed to prepare students to actively listen to lecture and integrate new information as they are learning it. This strategy can be carried out in 3 steps.  

1. Before class begins, give students a 3-5 sentence description of a problem that experts in your field solve using the concepts that are the focus of this class meeting. Have them predict in writing a good approach to the problem. Have them share ideas with a partner or small group, and then ask groups to share some of their predictions with you so you can write them on the board.  
2. During class, pause your lecture at least once (though you might pause two or three times) and give students a minute to re-read their initial predictions and make notes on the same paper about how their thinking is changing by having them answer questions like these:  
   • Given what you are learning in the lecture, would you still make the same prediction about the case, or would you revise it?  
   • Where was your initial thinking correct?  
   • Where was your initial thinking flawed?  
3. Have students share their ideas with a partner or small group and then have groups share their thoughts and make some more notes on the board about how their thinking is changing.  
4. At the end of class, have students reflect back on the problem and write a couple of sentences to articulate changes in their thinking about the problem and the solution. You might collect these papers so that you can see how they are beginning to integrate concepts from the lecture into their thinking and where they are still struggling.