Strategies to Increase Time on Task and Manage Distractions

Students who are active, inattentive, and/or impulsive often engage in off-task behaviour during independent work periods.  Helping students learn how to stay on task can be beneficial to all members of a classroom.

Suggestions for Improving Work Habits & Manage Distractions

• Decrease distractions in the environment to help limit the number of competing interests for his/her attention.

• Providing your client with headphones may be useful if the environment is noisy to minimize distractions

• Provide your client with priority seating or seating in a quiet area of the classroom (e.g. using trifold, bookcases or other physical barriers to cut down on visual distractions).

• Some students need more prompts to return to a task than do others.  Differences in attention span and concentration ability are just as real as differences in other abilities.

• Praise students who are on task.  This indirectly reminds off-task students to return to task. 
  • Try to make your praise specific: “Tiffany, I like the way that you are concentrating.  I can tell you are reading each question carefully and then choosing the best answer.”

• Have a classroom signal system so that your expectations are clear for each activity. 
  • For example, a green sign indicates that talking is permitted and a red sign indicates a “no talking” period. 
    • A seatwork sign may list the following expectations:  1) Stay in your seat, 2) Stay on task, and 3) Don’t bother others.

• Ensure that inattentive students are capable of completing the assignment.  Often students are less attentive when they find a task difficult.  A simple clarification or a legitimate task modification can sometimes prevent an entire period of off-task behaviour.

• Teach self-monitoring.  Self-monitoring reinforces continued effort and reminds students of what needs to be done next. 
  • For example, attach checklists to assignments so that students can check off each step when completed and monitor their own progress. 
  • You can use the same checklist framework each time (such as a proofreading checklist with reminders to check for name, date, capitals, punctuation, spelling, etc.). 
    • If the checklists are laminated and an erasable marker is used, the checklists can be reused many times.

• Check in with inattentive students frequently.  Your contact gives students some needed attention and stimulation.  If you do not provide it, these students are likely to seek it in other ways.  Sometimes classroom volunteers can be very helpful with this.

• Use hands-on activities, as students tend to be more motivated to complete these and can therefore stay on task longer.

• Teach self-talk.  When students are finding it difficult to persevere at a task, teach them to focus on what remains to be done and to talk themselves through it.  Students tend to be quite receptive to this strategy, especially when you explain that adults do it all the time (e.g., “Only one more day and it’s Friday!”). 
  • Coach the students to use statements like:  “Only three more questions to go.  I can do this!”

• Offer special activities for students who finish their work early.  Examples include computer time, drawing, and word searches.

• Pay attention to the students’ biological rhythm when planning activities.  People DO perform better at certain times of the day. 
  • For example, industrial accidents tend to occur around 1:30 to 2:00 in the afternoon. 
  • Try not to schedule your most demanding activities during the students’ weakest attentional levels.

• Try to schedule interesting or rewarding activities immediately after more difficult tasks.  This can help you to motivate students more easily by saying, “When we finish ___, then we can ___.”

• Make assignments as exciting and appealing as possible. 
  • For example, use pictures, cartoons, or coloured paper.  Use carefully planned activities and centres to catch and keep a student’s attention. 
  • Design lessons around students’ primary interests. 
  • It can be helpful to use computer programs for teaching certain skills, as they give students ongoing feedback and stimulation, thereby maintaining their attention.

• For reading activities, some students may benefit from reading to each other if they tend to get distracted and lose track of where they are, or if they forget what they are reading.

• Arranging his/her work environment to reduce the impact of noise or other distractions. This may include the use of a distraction-free area when studying, writing reports, and taking exams.

• To improve recall of oral instructions, rehearse instructions mentally or subvocally before acting on them.

• To help stay on task, verbalize the steps subvocally while following them.