Attention grabbers. As the name might suggest, attention grabbers are a tool to recapture and focus the children’s attention on the teacher when they’re getting distracted. Having given up classroom management tools like stickers, stars, rewards, and so on, they’re one of the only ‘manipulative’ things that I still do with children. (That is, the children aren’t aware that the true purpose of what I’m doing is not counting, clapping, or movement, but to return their attention to me.)
Mostly, you’ll use an attention grabber to focus all of the students on you, just before demonstrating an activity. If you don’t have the attention of all of the students, many won’t understand what is required of them to successfully complete the activity. You’ll then have to work extra hard to correct children or demonstrate how to do the activity as they’re doing it. That is time that could have been used more effectively to enhance student learning.
I should point out here that the best way to keep the very young learner’s attention is to have an engaging lesson in the first place. That is, you can reduce the need for tools or tricks through the structure of your lesson plan. The same thing applies for the need for other ‘classroom management’ techniques like reward systems or punishments. An active and engaging lesson doesn’t give the children time or the desire to ‘misbehave’, they’re too busy having fun.
More specifically, there are a few other things you can do to reduce the need for attention grabbers. First is to have a good mix and staging of activities that stir and settle. Next, try not to make your activities go for too long. The most appropriate length of the activities will depend upon your unique situation. Factors that might influence this are the age of the students (the younger the students, the shorter most activities should be), what the activity is (something that is more active and engaging for the students can go a little longer), and mix of boys/girls in the class, along with other factors.
You can find many suggestions for attention grabbers online, or from your fellow teachers. Its best you experiment to find some that work for you and your particular classes.
Over time, I’ve found a few attention grabbers that have worked well for me across all of my VYL EFL/ESL kindergarten English classes that I cover.
The first one is a counting attention grabber. I have my palms facing downwards, then turn them over back and forth as I count 1 – 10. Its a great way of practicing counting, and the kids enjoy it. As with many attention grabbers, I practice it with the children in the opening routine of the class, so that they will know it when I need to use it at another part of the class.
One thing to point out here is that this attention grabber requires a physical movement. I think that makes it a little more powerful. Other teachers have ‘call and response’ type attention grabbers, where the teacher says a phrase and the students reply with another.
A popular attention grabber of this style is “1-2-3, eyes on me”, and the students respond something like “1-2, eyes on you”. To be honest, that’s not a style of attention grabber that I enjoy doing. I recall one of the more innovative teachers I’ve been reading about who said she was happy when she got rid of tricks and tools like this (and worksheets) from her classroom. While she didn’t go into this point in any detail, what she had said resonated with me.
Another physical movement type of attention grabber simply requires the children to do a sequence of movements. For example, ‘hands up, touch your nose, wiggle your ears, tap your foot, jump, turn around… ready.’ I’ve seen others add in the grammar structure… ‘Can you jump…’, and so on. The children get to review action verbs as they refocus their attention.
The final attention grabber that I use frequently is to clap my hands rhythmically. I do this to the beat of the introduction to the song “We Will Rock You”. That is two claps with the hands, and then I put one arm on top of another in front of me. Then repeat the motion a few times before starting a count down from five to one. Across all of the cover classes I teach, most of the children really enjoy the clapping and rhythm. Sometimes when they see me around the centre, they’ll do the clapping motion and have a laugh, or want me to do it again with them.
In summary, attention grabbers are a useful tool to refocus the attention of the very young learner, especially before demonstrating activities. That said, I would prefer not to have to use them, and I’ve drastically reduced my need to call on them as my classes have become more active, engaging, and better staged. The use of regular brain breaks has further reduced my need for attention grabbers. In short, a good lesson plan reduces the need for attention grabbers and some of the other tips and tricks that are part of the typical EFL/ESL classroom. However, particularly for the beginning teacher, and early days of a new class, you will likely find attention grabbers to be a useful tool to quickly refocus your students.
