5 ways to get children's attention in class!

Many teachers comment: "today's children do not pay attention", "I have to do circus, rope and theater to get their attention", "today's children are very distracted". So, how can you catch the children's attention in class? 

Children today are different from past generations, they are natives of the digital age; his brain is over stimulated so that his thought processes and his ability to pay attention is not the same as those that have already passed 40 years of age.

It attracts your attention!

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Teachers in the classroom must not only master their subjects, teaching techniques or material handling; today more than ever they must understand the human being who attends their class, the children of today "work" differently, their brain does not move like the teacher's.

For children to learn they need to pay attention and that means concentrating on one aspect, as well as dedicating time to do activities in relation to it.

Given this, we must take into account that at birth in the digital age, the media have made the new generation have a low "sustained attention" that is, if something does not like or bores them, change the channel, page , and they keep searching until they find something that catches their "attention"

Imagine a group of children who move to the rhythm "touch", multi-screen, living in the "blogosphere" (on the web) and come to their room where the teacher, accustomed to a language learning style, wants to teach them; they lose interest in a few seconds and look for entertainment.

The digital native today requires visual, interactive and dynamic media. Therefore, we give you seven basic actions to capture your attention:

1. Value them. 

Your students are digital natives but they do not stop being human; The first thing you need to get their attention is to value them as people, their interests and aptitudes, make them feel they are important and valuable.

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2. Speak your language, in your own style.

 All people have a particular way of looking at life. The digital native has new concepts of life, relationships, topics of interest etc, find out about them, understand them and, from there, initiate communication.

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3. Quick start routines. 

Surely you know the expression 'Each teacher has his book.' Well, what is involved is that the student internalizes as quickly as possible the routine with which you start a teaching session. Hence, it is so important:

•   The puntuality
• The rapid placement of students in the classroom
• Start up the necessary devices (computer, POI, projector ...)
• Have ready the necessary material for the teaching session (avoid having to return to the staff room or your department)

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4. Move in the classroom.

When as teachers we find ourselves in a situation where there is a group of children who do not pay attention, one of the techniques that usually work is to invest the classroom, that is, as teachers we move to the back of the classroom (because there lack of attention will begin). Or we can extend to one side of the classroom (in case the focus of inattention is there).

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5. Start with a mental warm-up. 

Pose an exercise or a challenge on the board, organize teams of three students and ask them to work together and raise their hands when they have solved the problem, challenge, question or activity.

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Today I thought it was important to talk about a topic that can happen to all of us at any time, I hope the points that I played in this post helped them. If you have something to say, let me know in the comments box and we can create a great topic of conversation, which serves to learn other ideologies and techniques to put into practice in the classroom. I also invite you to go through the channel of @steemiteducation, who is the creator of such a movie based on children's learning...