First Grade: Focusing Attention & Listening

For our first unit this year, we are focusing on Skills for Learning. There are four Skills for Learning that I teach:

1. Focus Attention
2. Listen
3. Use Self-Talk
4. Be Assertive

We started out our lesson by talking about my expectations for when I am in the classroom.

We played the Brain Builder My Turn, Your Turn, where students listen to my instructions then wait until their turn to repeat back to me what I said. I typically say two body parts for them to point to, then give some wait time before their turn begins. Students often find it difficult to wait, so this is good practice for them. We talk about why we do Brain Builders -- because they help us have strong brains and be better learners.

Next, Snail came to visit the class and taught students the Listening Rules:

• Eyes Watching (point to eyes)
• Ears Listening (point to ears)
• Voices Quiet (finger over mouth)
• Body Still (give self a hug)

The students practiced repeating the rules back to Snail, and then we moved on to the discussion part of our lesson. We spoke about a boy named Abraham who was learning a new game in P.E. that he really wanted to learn. We talked about what he could do to make sure he understood how to plan and remembered the rules (look at the teacher, listen to instructions, pay attention). We also talked about a tool that Abraham uses called an attent-o-scope. He makes each hand into a circle and places them over each eye to create his attent-o-scope, which helps him focus and block out distractions. We talked about how once our attention is focused, we can put our attent-o-scopes down and continue to focus. We also talked about how to activate our attent-o-scopes: by telling ourselves in our minds to "focus," "pay attention," or "activate attent-o-scope."

We finished our lesson with a quick review of the skills we had learned.