Students’ heavy reliance on today’s electronic devices can lead to fragmented attention and reduced focus on educational tasks. Gloria Mark, Ph.D., from the University of California, Irvine, found that people change their focus every 47 seconds when using screens, marking a 50% decrease in attention span over a decade.
The question is “How do we help students develop sustained attention to reading tasks?” Reading researchers have looked at comprehension monitoring, an important subskill for successful reading comprehension. Good readers are aware of how well they are understanding as well as how well they are storing information in memory for later retrieval. Unfortunately, poor readers are often unaware that they are failing to understand or remember information
Both good and poor readers can improve sustained attention. One method is to ask students if pairs of sentences have the same meaning, such as “The horse ate the apple” and “The apple was eaten by the horse.” Despite different surface structures, their deep structures have the same meaning. The discernment requires quite a bit of attention.
By determining if sentences share the same or different meanings, readers develop sustained attention. They learn that meaning comes from sentences and paragraphs, not individual words. Practice in the active construction of meaning improves the retention of information.
“Accomplish Reading” is a free six-part app that helps students improve their reading comprehension and focus. It can be downloaded to iPads and Apple Business Manager from www.accomplishonline.com. The app’s Demo feature demonstrates how each part works and how direct instruction as feedback enhances instruction and learning.
