Easy Ways to Boost Your Child's Concentration | Episode 97

TD Flenaugh discusses the importance of stamina for children's academic success, particularly during end-of-year testing. She emphasizes the need for children to develop the ability to focus for extended periods, suggesting incremental practice starting from early grades. Flenaugh recommends daily reading sessions, think-aloud activities, and tracking progress with charts. For middle schoolers, she advises book talks and timed reading sprints. High school students should engage in practice tests and structured study sessions. She also highlights the significance of perseverance and the use of brain breaks and note-taking systems to enhance concentration and learning retention.

Transcript

TD Flenaugh: 0:00

Stamina? Does your son or daughter have the ability to sustain quiet, focus concentration when it comes to reading, studying or engaging in a task that takes skill and skill and knowledge, if not, this episode is going to give you the strategies and tips to help you get your kid on track, or to give them that competitive advantage needed for success, the skill of stamina. Hi, thank you so much for joining the falling for learning podcast. I am TD Flenaugh. We have this podcast to help parents and caregivers with having the resources, strategies and tools needed to make sure that their children are on track for learning and to stay on track for success. Hello everyone. Welcome to the falling for learning podcast. It's another little special welcome that I'm giving you. This is one of my solo episodes where we're really getting into a particular time of the season. Okay, some adjustments need to be made at time of the year when kids around the United States are taking their end of the year test, their state test, that really give them an idea about where they are when it comes to being on grade level, having the skills needed to be successful in school, and not just in school, in the different pursuits that they may have in their life. And one of the keys to the success is making sure that your child has stamina, that is the ability to focus on a task. Some of these state state tests, they may take as long as two hours to do a good job, a thorough job, and a job that is worthy of a grade level score. Now, depending on your child's age and range their age, and you know, you know range of ability, right? They may be on a couple of different pathways. First of all, they might be a child that is not able to focus for two minutes, one minute, right? And you might have a kid that is kind of medium about this, right? But it's something that you need to work on. They may already be at the age that they are taking state tests and asked to sit quietly and get work done. And they actually may already not be ready for the test. You know, they're too young, and they maybe have another year or so. So either way that you are on this spectrum of your child's age and their range of abilities. This episode is for you, because your child is going to need this skill. Now, a lot of people talk about tests and talk about how controversial they are and and how they don't measure everything. Yes, yes and yes. I also want to say that if you're a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a plumber, a licensed plumber, a licensed electrician, contractor, so trade and professional types of careers, you need to take some type of test. And so testing is real life, and it's real serious, right? So I'm going to really start with just saying one of the first things that we could talk about is how to make sure that your kid can stay quiet for a certain amount of time. Now, obviously this does not happen overnight. As they are in second grade or third grade, you could start helping them build this up again. They don't have to be that young. They may be a lot older, and still don't have that skill. So we need to build it. It is a skill. It's something that needs to be taught number one and number two. It needs to be practiced. So you can't just with, like most things that are really worthy of your attention and your time. It's not a one time you're going to teach this and then, you know, that's good- they got it not going to happen. So. So they need to practice having concentration. And when we're talking about concentration, we're not talking about something like your iPad or your cell phone that has an algorithm that is working to keep you engaged. We're not talking about that the test that your students have to take, your child, the test that your you have to take as a professional, as an adult, they make sure that you don't have anything. Your watch has to go, sometimes even the earrings gotta go, let alone, you know, a cell phone or or something like that. It's just you don't have those things to rely on to keep you engaged. So it's something that you need to practice on without all those bells and whistles, without the cell phone, without all of those things, because if you don't when they need these skills, they're getting low scores. You want your child to be in certain programs. They don't qualify for them. You want them to have a scholarship somewhere. They don't, you know, they don't have the skills, they don't have the academic level to to do it. And so really, that skill of being able to build stamina, being able to concentrate for longer periods of time and focus on an intellectual pursuit is something that is a skill that separates success from people who are less successful. And so, you know, it's something that you can recognize that your child may have a challenge with and build them up in tiny increments. You know, we're going to add a minute a week to how long they could sit and concentrate on reading a book. They could sit and work on some math problems. They can work on whatever that intellectual pursuit is. You could even start with something like drawing or artwork that they can do quietly. So quiet is one of the skills, and then actually concentrating on this particular thing while they're working on the skill is important. As you know, if you've been in a particular test testing environment, you're not supposed to be talking, so that could be them whisper, reading, you know, using their mouth to like mouth the words, but not saying anything, you know, voiceless. It also could mean them just, you know, keeping everything inside of their head and helping them to do that. So I'm going to talk about different methods, because everybody is different, different methods are going to work better for different people. So if you are someone who you think your child maybe not be able to do this, that is not true. And you know, if they have a diagnosed condition like ADHD or something like that, they also can focus it just needs to be something that they're very interested in. And once you get them that thing that they're interested in, they could build that skill within that particular interest area and then build from there on things that they're less interested in Okay, so it is something that all kids are able to do, but you need to find the right combination for them. Right? They might be a whisper reader. They might be someone who's just keeping it all in their head. They may be someone who starts with reading five minutes per day, and then building up to six minutes, eight minutes going five minute increment in five minute increments going longer and longer. You have to figure out what that right recipe or ingredient of teaching your child is, but it is your job to teach them, right. I know that we talk about, you know what teachers are supposed to be doing and all of that, but you making sure that your child has practice and concentrating is something a parent should be doing. Take my advice. You are going to see the benefits when your child is able to concentrate and focus on a skill. So let's get into thinking about the different ages and how this practice looks, and you know how to implement it into your family The R.E.W.R.I.T.E. Method and The R.E.W.R.I.T.E. Method life. Workbook are your go to resource for helping kids to learn to fall in love with writing, it has the tips, tools, resources, strategies and skill building activities to help kids fall out of writing and into loving to write. Get your book set today. Okay, so let's talk about elementary age and really thinking about how to build your reading stamina. So you want to have daily reading sessions with your child. And one way to get into this is doing a read aloud and think aloud with your child. You modeling how to think about a text and to question the text. All of those things are going to help your child when they are reading by themselves independently, again, it could look like whisper reading or just keeping everything silent inside of your head. So the next thing that we're going to talk about is tracking the progress. So you might just start with five or 10 minutes and build that silent reading up and using a chart to track progress. You could give your child goals by you know, you start in August or September, you start in June, you start in May, and you want to say in three months, you should be able to read silently for 30 minutes. Right now, you do five minutes. And you might even start with just seeing how long it takes them to, like, break concentration or to be distracted, and then, you know, help them build from there. So you could just start with five minutes, or you could just see where your child is in this on the skill level. So that is what you should be doing for elementary schoolers who are reading doing, like learning to build that reading stamina by doing read alouds and doing Think alouds, how to think through the tech. Now, when they get into middle school, it's really important to, you know, expand what they're doing by doing like book talks or book circles, because they don't need to think aloud, the read aloud and think aloud in the same way if and again, they may need it, but if they don't, you're looking at a shift, a think aloud, I mean, a book talk with peers and adults, right? Could help them, you know, sustain when they're doing concentrated, silent reading, because they are again thinking about different perspectives and making connections. So it gives them a little bit more depth. So it's not just you modeling, but they're hearing other people's ideas about it, and they could agree with it or disagree with it, but it gives them more to think about as they're reading. They can be, you know, chunking that text by doing that reading log, like, I'm gonna read 10 minutes a day, not 10 minutes a day, sorry, 10 pages a day. And they could even do some, you know, timed reading sprints, like seeing how much they could read in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And think about breaks that they may take to journal or write about the text. Jot down, sketch different images they're having related to the text. Taking notes, expanding their time by doing more than just reading, but then they're starting to take notes, annotate, draw, doing different things to help them expand the amount that they're producing while they're reading. Because before, it's just thoughts, and now it's written. And again, this can be flexible for different grade levels. But, you know, we're just talking about where you know, middle schoolers could be. They don't have to be there. And, of course, we know wherever our kids are, we need to be able to help build on wherever they are. When we're thinking in terms of high school, you want to talk about reading and journaling as they're reading now, it might be a lot more in depth they are thinking about literary devices. They're doing dialectical journals and different things like that, to document their thinking, to connect different texts to what they're reading. So all of that is key in helping them to sustain their focus, and again, they may be bringing sets, right? I want to say a text set, a series of books or articles, even videos that relate to the same topic, will help them to sustain more focus and. Build get, you know, get more in depth knowledge about a topic. Now, as much as we can give them a choice of topics, give them, you know, some preferences, because when they like it, when they choose it, they have some ownership of it, and they have more interest in it. So making your child concentrate on things that they don't like is going to be more challenging, and probably is not going to work. So really try to hook them in with things that they enjoy and that they like and that they could read about, they could write about, they could draw about it, so that they are in the habit of doing longer type of study and, you know, get more in depth and knowledge about different topics. Let's talk about test taking stamina. So I want to also talk about, when I'm talking about this, you know, Brain Breaks now, brain breaks when you're in elementary school. May look like, you know, marching in plays, you know, doing it a little chant. But obviously, in a test, taking environment, brain break is going to look different. The brain break may look like sketching, drawing something, making a pattern. You may go on a little mind walk right? You know, thinking about something that you'll do after something a great memory you had before. But they should also think about timing. When it comes to Brain Breaks five minutes or less, and then getting back down to the business, think in terms of when someone is running. They may get too tired and they want to stop and they could stop running, but they have to continue on their journey, but they could walk. They could slow down and walk. So a brain break is something that they're doing. They're still silent, but they are, you know, jotting, like quick journaling or something real quick resting their eyes. You don't want them to go to sleep, but there's different things to do just to take a break and then get back down to business when we're also talking about test taking stamina. It really is also about being quiet again. So I'm going to bring up the quiet one, the quiet thing again. If kids like the tap tapping on a table or something like that, doesn't work in a testing environment, but they could tap on their lap, and they could do this fairly quietly. They could tap on their shoulders. There's things that they could do that makes it silent. So again, a brain break or tapping or something like that may help you concentrate. May help give you a little break that you need, but make sure whatever it is isn't silent, because you don't have a right to disrupt other people's testing and thinking with making a lot of noise. And you know, and you know, professional test taking environments like if you're trying to take an exam or certification test, you get kicked out of it. And there's big implications for that, and ramifications for that, as you're trying to build a career, or keep your certification, to keep your job, or whatever, so kids need to understand that they need to maintain the quiet and then different ways to do that. All of this talk about stamina. Again, I'm going to bring up, you know, character traits that you're building, such as perseverance. So you know that your child is not able to concentrate and they need help with it, but also talking to them about that character trait that they're building is perseverance, like pushing through even when you're tired, even when you don't feel like it, and even when things are difficult, that is part of what you're doing when you are building stamina in your kids. Because, remember, if they're not able to be quiet for a certain period of time, or they're not able to concentrate for a certain period of time, that also means that they are giving up when they feel like it, and perseverance is able to build that muscle so they could continue even when they're tired, or it takes them longer to get tired, and so that's an important part of this, you know, talking to your child and training your child in the way they should go, and telling them, you know, what is it in in it for them like this, this skill of perseverance is going to help pay lots of dividends for them and for your family as they get older. So the test taking strategy for middle middle schoolers, they could take time to test to see how they do with this like practice test, whatever test they're supposed to be taking, most of them are going to have a practice test and giving them a practice test and seeing how they do with it, even talking to them about how to structure their time. You know, sometimes it's like, Okay, go for the easiest things first. If you see something hard, focus on that first. So then you could do the easy ones at the end. And again, they will be learning about this. Is themselves like? What works for them? Does it work for them to tackle the hard things first? Does it work for them to do the easy things first? So, you know, maybe a couple hard ones, couple easy ones, they have to kind of learn that whatever we're doing, we want to turn over the responsibility for it to kids eventually, who will be adults, so them learning about themselves as they're practicing. This does mean a lot. So with high school, you know, they have more than state tests. They have AP tests, that's advanced placement. They have the s, a T, the A, C, T, different tests that they can take. Now, those tests are not required as much anymore, but it will give kids a competitive advantage if someone else has not taken it and everything else is similar about their resume or their application, the person who's taking the test often gets an advantage over others. It also opens them up for scholarship opportunities that you won't have if you're not going to take the test. So keep that in mind again. Decide what's best for your child, and discuss it with them. What did they prefer? And then, you know, if you're you know, whatever test you're taking, get practice tests. Have some timed practice test. Have some dedicated time for practicing and when I'm saying dedicated time is that at night when the younger kids are asleep, is that early in the morning when everybody else is asleep, you know, or everyone's out of the house during this time. So I could really concentrate with my child and help them with this. So again, come up with a plan. See how that plan goes. Adjust it accordingly, because it is doable, but it is not going to get done just out of want. It's going to get done out of putting plans in place and actually going through and following those plans. When we talk about studying stamina, because we've talked about reading, we've talked about test taking, but studying is something just like your lifelong you may need to do and you need to talk about, like studying. You know the structure of your study and how you're going to study. Setting those studying environments, going to the library, going to a coffee shop, going somewhere, maybe you just have your room making sure the TV is off and focused on reading and writing. I have, like, a little dirty secret with my with my studying. Well, I don't know if it's my my studying. If I have a task I don't like doing, I do sometimes, like, put on a show that's not as entertaining for me, and I will get that stuff done while I'm working. Now, it's not the same as studying. When I'm studying, I have to just, like, turn everything off and just really focus on reading and do it really early or really late so that I can get it done and that there's not any distractions and big noises and stuff like that, taking me out of my zone of, you know, concentration. So using timers and checklists will really help get things done as you're studying like, because sometimes you're like, What should I do? Or what was I supposed to do? I forgot to do this. But having a checklist, having a timer, gives you a good range of things to do in a set amount of time, you can gage how well you're progressing, and if you have to do this more days, or you know how, however things are progressing, right? We start, we're always talking about progress checks and actually looking at the progress, right? So checklist, timers, charting the progress. It's important to that's how you stay on track with a goal is writing it down and then actually tracking that progress. You could do predictions or goal setting ahead of time, and then try to see if that matches. If you're saying, I'm going to study for two hours. Like, what are you going to do? 30 minutes for math, 30 minutes for this. Or if it's all one subject, maybe it's different topics that you're doing, or different parts of a project that you're working on. So really helping them to structure their study time? Are they going to have, like, color coded things. Making sure everything's organized is where it's supposed to be, because studying can definitely be disruptive. We're like, Okay, where's my pants? Let me get up and find a pen. So what book am I supposed to? Let me go find that book. You know, I need to find a cord for my computer. It's like, you know, you're 1015, 30 minutes in. And really, you know, work has gotten done because the materials aren't even there. So being organized, having your materials in the place where they're supposed to be is going to get you to where you want to go that actual time with nodes in the book, you know, reading eyes on this text, you know, pen to paper, you know, typing in that document. So really important to be organized. Another thing about studying is note taking, systems like people take coral Cornell notes, some people use, you know, the traditional like Roman numerals with note taking, they highlight annotated text. They may use post it notes. They may write exactly on that text. But having specific things that you could go back to later, or that you've written or you produced while you were studying is an important gage of how well you're studying, because studying is something that you need to go back to, and you need to be able to recall that information, explain it, make connections with that information. And if you just read a book, and you haven't marked up the book or made any notes, then it is less likely that you're going to remember it. Studies show the things that you write write down are going to be things that are easier to remember. So writing it down actually, you know, eliminates your need to remember, you know, to actually read what you wrote, but eventually, right? But if you're not writing it down, then it's like, where did I see that? Where did I hear what did it say? And kind of getting things twisted up or mixed up. So, you know, writing down, taking notes, annotating those are things that you could be doing to actively read your information. That you could start, you know, synthesize, like putting things together like, these are the three parts of this thing. These are the four parts. These are three main three main events. These are three main steps to this process. So those kind of things that you're able to recall and talk about and explain and connect and transfer to other topics or situations are things that you're getting out of studying like actual, productive, effective studying. So let's get to our overview of what we're doing today, just really talking about how building stamina and being very intentional about it, teaching it for your children and actually practicing it for kids is very much something that you should be doing. If you haven't started this already, get to it right. It's going to give your child the competitive advantage falling for learning. Podcast is all about helping you get your kids on track for learning and to stay on track for success, and helping to set goals for building stamina, getting to a certain amount of time, I would recommend an hour in elementary school, eventually, by the end of elementary school, an hour by the end of middle school, maybe two hours, three hours for high school, where they're able to concentrate and focus on studying, they may need to be taking brain breaks, adding incremental progress, tracking the progress as far as how long it takes to, you know, to break concentration and and then techniques for helping to build that concentration, like, you know, writing down notes, tracking, you know, progress of, you know, writing down notes, and also charting the progress and how long you are building, setting goals like these are clear ways to help make sure that you pay attention to this goal and follow through with it. Thanks again for joining us. Have a great week. Thanks again for supporting the Falling for Learning Podcast, new episodes go live every Saturday at 5pm you can watch us on youtube.com/@fallingforlearning or listen on all major podcast platforms such as Apple, Google, Audible, Spotify and much more for more resources, visit fallinginlovewithlearning.com we really appreciate you. Have a wonderful week.