What does it mean to read with focus?Focusing is hard. It's hard for adults, it's hard with electronics and social media, it's hard in general.
Focusing is all about avoiding distractions and thinking while reading specifically about what is being read. It also uses metacognition to have students think about what makes them distracted, how to use coping strategies to avoid the distraction, and how to pull their attention back to the text. Challenge students to read without getting distracted. Once they start noticing they are getting distracted while reading, put a sticky-note in their book right then and write a quick summary over what they just read. This will help pull them back into the book. Over the course of SIR (structured independent reading), they can also count to see how many sticky notes they had to use and how many pages they read between them. |
Keep track of this and challenge them to read for longer periods of text without distractions and/or to read the same number of pages with less sticky notes.
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How to Assess for Focus
Helping Students FOCUS
If students are struggling with focus, try these strategies:
1. PREPARE THE MIND:
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Mini-Lessons and Interventions: FocusClick here for a sample of reading mini-lessons on focus from Jennifer Serravallo's book, Reading Strategies. I highly recommend this book! (Must have an AISD login to access the excerpt; you may have to download for hyperlinks to work.)
VISUAL PACING:
Use a pen or pencil as a pacer, to control the visual sweep of the saccadic movement of your eyeballs, as attested by most fast readers. You can also try a tool that specifically works to help students focus on one line at a time. |