Archive | March, 2009

Keeping Kids Focused

Posted on March 19, 2009 by in Characteristics

Various doodles drawn during an afternoon math...
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A sce­nario with which you are prob­a­bly famil­iar: You are giv­ing direc­tions for an upcom­ing project, or explain­ing a com­plex math con­cept, or lead­ing a dis­cus­sion about the story the class just read in the read­ing book. Dozens of eyes are focused in your direc­tion as the stu­dents hang on your every word. You glance to the left, where you see one of your gifted stu­dents, eyes down, pen­cil drift­ing lazily across the page of her note­book in elab­o­rate, abstract swirls and angles. Inter­rupt­ing your speech, you call her name. She looks up, you ask her to put the pen­cil and note­book away and pay atten­tion, she com­plies, and you go on, con­fi­dent that she is now engaged in the impor­tant stuff.

Most of us have been in that posi­tion. I’m cer­tain, though, that you can recall more than once in class (or as likely, grad­u­ate school) being where that stu­dent was.

Why do we doo­dle? It is entirely pos­si­ble that by mak­ing your stu­dents stop doo­dling, you are actu­ally harm­ing their abil­ity to focus on what you’re teach­ing. A report about this on NPR last week has some inter­est­ing impli­ca­tions for teach­ers of gifted stu­dents. Jackie Andrade, a psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Ply­mouth, has stud­ied doo­dling and its effects, and found that it is a cop­ing mech­a­nism that peo­ple use to give their brains some­thing to process when they are not being suf­fi­ciently stim­u­lated:

“If you look at people’s brain func­tion when they’re bored, we find that they are using a lot of energy — their brains are very active,” Andrade says. The rea­son, she explains, is that the brain is designed to con­stantly process infor­ma­tion. But when the brain finds an envi­ron­ment bar­ren of stim­u­lat­ing information…the brain [typ­i­cally] turns to day­dreams.… The func­tion of doodling…is to pro­vide just enough cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion dur­ing an oth­er­wise bor­ing task to pre­vent the mind from tak­ing the more rad­i­cal step of totally opt­ing out of the sit­u­a­tion and run­ning off into a fan­tasy world.


Your gifted stu­dents, whose brains are gen­er­ally already in a higher gear than the rest of the class, prob­a­bly find them­selves in this low-​​stimulation state fre­quently. So before you ask your kids to put away the pen­cils, con­sider that they may actu­ally be pay­ing more atten­tion than the ones with noth­ing else to do.

But even more, con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity of being proac­tive in your approach:

  • When­ever pos­si­ble, plan high-​​engagement and high-​​stimulation activities
  • Give your stu­dents scratch pads or paper and allow them to keep them out at all times
  • Switch modes fre­quently to keep the brain alert
  • When stu­dents doo­dle, don’t take it personally
  • Look for cues that you need to take breaks or shift gears

Under­stand­ing the brain and rec­og­niz­ing the out­ward signs of what it is doing will help you stay in tune with your stu­dents and meet their needs more eas­ily. And the next time you’re in a fac­ulty meet­ing, glance around and see how many of your col­leagues are keep­ing their brains occupied.

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