Seat the distracted child in the least busy area of the classroom. Avoid seating the distracted child near doors, windows or any high-traffic areas such as near the pencil sharpener. Also, arrange the furniture in your classroom so you can circulate around the room freely. If you can walk by each student's desk regularly, your movement will redirect their attention to you.
Introduce new concepts with active learning. When starting a new unit or introducing a new concept, allow students to participate in hands-on learning. If you are introducing the concept of volume, pass around three-dimensional shapes for students to handle and explore. If you're introducing the metric system, pass out rulers and have students measure items in the classroom. Distracted children may need to actively move more than other children, and giving them an opportunity to move in the classroom can bring their attention back to the lesson.
Vary your teaching methods to keep distracted students focused. If you always begin lessons in the same way, they may tune out and not pay attention to you. If you vary your teaching techniques, however, students are more apt to sit up and listen. Encourage discussion, use overheads or smart boards, have students take notes, or introduce readers' theaters to your class time. A readers' theater is similar to a play. Each student has a part in the script, and the entire class reads along -- each child saying his part as it comes up. Readers' theaters require each student to be involved, so the distracted student and those influenced by him will stay focused.
Arrange your classroom time so that you can work one-on-one with students during class. If you have a paraprofessional, teacher's aid or parent volunteer, have your helper supervise independent work while you pull students out for one-on-one teaching time. Distracted students respond well to one-on-one interaction, and your eye contact and direct questions can help them to understand new concepts. This one-on-one time is also valuable because it allows you to assess whether a concept has been fully grasped.
Review material at the end of class to help distracted learners remember what was covered. Encourage students to write down key points of the lesson, and ask questions to find out whether distracted students really understood what you taught. If you sense that distracted learners missed the concepts, assign them homework to relearn the lesson so they don't fall behind the rest of the class.