Suggestions to Improve Academic Focus

This is a quick list of ideas to help children learn better, attend longer, and store what they do and learn in long term memory.

1. See sensory diet routine attached below for ideas of sensory break or sensory prep activities.

2. Start the day with linear swinging for at least 15 minutes in a calm manner. Follow or combine this with heavy work such as throwing a medicine ball, holding it up high, lifting weights, wheelbarrow walking off elliptical ball, or other activities that are joint and muscle related. See attached for details...

After at least 25 minutes of "sensory prep" work, then ask the child to sit at the desk and do a learning activity.

Set a digital or visual red timer and show the schedule for the next few hours using pictures or words (whatever the child can understand). Let them know if they work well, when the timer goes off, then they get a "sensory diet" break for 5 minutes. If they stop working, talk excessively, or get distracted, then set the timer back for that amount of time they were not working.

After they sit for that period of time, set the timer for longer the next session. Work up to 45 minutes max.

Think of ways to do learning with different body posturing such as rocking in a rocking chair to read, standing or jumping to do spelling words, laying on belly to write or color.

Our bodies were not made to sit in chairs and desks for long periods of time, children learn through touching, moving and doing best, remember this!

3. Use a fidget basket or bag of quiet squeeze toys or small hand fidgets that the student can squeeze and hold while listening and sitting for long periods of time. If this ever becomes a distraction it must be taken away.

4. To help with need to fidget in the seat and get more movement stimulation while sitting the student can wear a weighted vest, sit on a move and sit seat wedge, wear ankle weights, and wrap elastic material around the bottom of the chair so that instead of kicking the chair and getting in trouble, they can push against the elastic to try to stimulate tone and movement to help keep their brains and bodies attentive.

5. Use auditory filters: white noise such as a fan, noise machines, music such as ocean waves, wind, Gregorian Chant, or Mozart helps, junior ear muffs or headphones to filter out background sounds.

6. Limit TV, computer, and Nintendo time to only a MAX of 30 minutes- 1 hour a day. This is hard for many people, but will reap great benefits! Most experts actually recommend NO TV, COMPUTER, or video games until a child is 9-10 years old, and very small amounts even then!

Excessive visual and auditory stimulation from these things makes a child have a hard time calming down, they get overwhelmed by all the information coming at them, and they go into a lower brain function than sleeping, basically shutting down their brains and bodies. This is detrimental to brain growth, as well as harmful to attention, the way they learn, memory, and ability to socialize.

7. Remember that children learn through all their senses and the most powerful sense is movement, so try to use hands on teaching techniques and hands on learning as often as possible. Let them use all their senses to learn and the information will stick longer and go into their long term memory!

8. To help children to actually hear and listen tell them to "tune their ears" by touching both their ears and LOOK at you in the eyes when you are telling them something to do. Give short easy to follow instructions. Have them repeat back to you what you said.

9. For children having a hard time working from left to right, sit on the left of the child, use a green paper under the left half of their paper, and a red one on the other half. Or use red and green smiley face stickers for each line, or marker dots. This cues them to always start at the green, and work on writing or reading until they see the red, then they look for the green again!

10. Use special and consistently spaced writing paper such as raised line, graph paper for all writing assignments. If the lines in the paper is differently spaced, they will never learn to write letters the same size, most children write in the space allowed. You have to give them consistent guidelines for how big to make the letters.

Please see handouts, evaluation, and OT notebook for many great resources and many more ideas to help you in the classroom and parents at home.

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Home > Helping Children Attend, Learn, and Focus > Academic Recommendations > Suggestions to Improve Academic Focus Suggestions to Improve Academic Focus Academic Related Recommendations* This is a quick list of ideas to help children learn better, attend longer, and store what they do and learn in long term memory. 1. See sensory diet routine attached below for ideas of sensory break or sensory prep activities. 2. Start the day with linear swinging for at least 15 minutes in a calm manner. Follow or combine this with heavy work such as throwing a medicine ball, holding it up high, lifting weights, wheelbarrow walking off elliptical ball, or other activities that are joint and muscle related. See attached for details... After at least 25 minutes of "sensory prep" work, then ask the child to sit at the desk and do a learning activity. Set a digital or visual red timer and show the schedule for the next few hours using pictures or words (whatever the child can understand). Let them know if they work well, when the timer goes off, then they get a "sensory diet" break for 5 minutes. If they stop working, talk excessively, or get distracted, then set the timer back for that amount of time they were not working. After they sit for that period of time, set the timer for longer the next session. Work up to 45 minutes max. Think of ways to do learning with different body posturing such as rocking in a rocking chair to read, standing or jumping to do spelling words, laying on belly to write or color. Our bodies were not made to sit in chairs and desks for long periods of time, children learn through touching, moving and doing best, remember this! 3. Use a fidget basket or bag of quiet squeeze toys or small hand fidgets that the student can squeeze and hold while listening and sitting for long periods of time. If this ever becomes a distraction it must be taken away. 4. To help with need to fidget in the seat and get more movement stimulation while sitting the student can wear a weighted vest, sit on a move and sit seat wedge, wear ankle weights, and wrap elastic material around the bottom of the chair so that instead of kicking the chair and getting in trouble, they can push against the elastic to try to stimulate tone and movement to help keep their brains and bodies attentive. 5. Use auditory filters: white noise such as a fan, noise machines, music such as ocean waves, wind, Gregorian Chant, or Mozart helps, junior ear muffs or headphones to filter out background sounds. 6. Limit TV, computer, and Nintendo time to only a MAX of 30 minutes- 1 hour a day. This is hard for many people, but will reap great benefits! Most experts actually recommend NO TV, COMPUTER, or video games until a child is 9-10 years old, and very small amounts even then! Excessive visual and auditory stimulation from these things makes a child have a hard time calming down, they get overwhelmed by all the information coming at them, and they go into a lower brain function than sleeping, basically shutting down their brains and bodies. This is detrimental to brain growth, as well as harmful to attention, the way they learn, memory, and ability to socialize. 7. Remember that children learn through all their senses and the most powerful sense is movement, so try to use hands on teaching techniques and hands on learning as often as possible. Let them use all their senses to learn and the information will stick longer and go into their long term memory! 8. To help children to actually hear and listen tell them to "tune their ears" by touching both their ears and LOOK at you in the eyes when you are telling them something to do. Give short easy to follow instructions. Have them repeat back to you what you said. 9. For children having a hard time working from left to right, sit on the left of the child, use a green paper under the left half of their paper, and a red one on the other half. Or use red and green smiley face stickers for each line, or marker dots. This cues them to always start at the green, and work on writing or reading until they see the red, then they look for the green again! 10. Use special and consistently spaced writing paper such as raised line, graph paper for all writing assignments. If the lines in the paper is differently spaced, they will never learn to write letters the same size, most children write in the space allowed. You have to give them consistent guidelines for how big to make the letters. Please see handouts, evaluation, and OT notebook for many great resources and many more ideas to help you in the classroom and parents at home.	Related Topics:

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