Providing students with activities that require the use of two hands helps them to focus on tasks. Work with children on building block towers, shaping modeling dough, climbing rock walls and exploring sensory tables, giving them opportunities to learn through playful and hands-on experiences. When children start to lose focus during group or story times, give them objects to hold that correlate with the lesson. This will help to keep them still and focused on classroom topics.
Students must learn to extract information from lectures and reading materials to gain processing skills. Presenting children with information-gathering activities assists them in processing information. Teachers can lead students to relevant information by giving them clues or challenges. Create scavenger hunts to accompany textbook reading assignments. As students read curriculum materials, they can look for information based on hints from the game. For example, when reading about the solar system, the scavenger hunt might ask students to list the names of planets, our galaxy and the brightest star.
Students need processing skills to not only understand new information, but also to store it for future use. By building skills of information retention in students, teachers give them tools to use and access their long-term memories. As an activity to help students remember lessons throughout the day, give them index cards and ask them to write down one key fact or vocabulary word from discussions, along with a question regarding the topic. This will reintroduce the information to students, increasing the likelihood of retention.
When students learn to organize new data, they process it more easily. Maps, graphs and charts help to visually organize information, making it more accessible to students. Making concept maps that coincide with learning topics allows students to organize information from lesson plans. After presenting a lesson to the class, ask students to group the information into one main topic, then several general and specific subtopics. Organizing new information on paper provides practice for organizing topics in their minds.