Any educator can attest to the mounting challenge of maintaining student attention in the classroom. Students’ exposure to digital media from a very young age has both diminished their capacity to pay attention and led them to crave interactions with devices during times when their use is not essential.
Yet, engagement matters. Students’ capacity to participate in activities and “be present” serves as a powerful indicator of how they will fare in engagement with people and academics. Here are a few ways to foster that engagement, despite the challenges:
1. Igniting Curiosity and Relevance
Students should be taught lessons with thought-provoking questions. The more inquisitive the mind, the more in sync they are with dealing with real-world problems and building connections later in life. It’s important to have teachers who help students see value in what they’re learning. To help students discover that value, allow them to draw connections by using current events, surprising facts, or personal stories as examples. Incorporating movement and multiple modes of learning in day-to-day classroom life helps to build active inquiry. The idea is to foster greater participation and sustained focus. Relating students’ learning to their lived experience will help you boost interaction, spark curiosity, and keep students invested in their learning journey.
2. Create a Safe and Supportive Environment
Countless studies have shown that psychological safety acts as a foundation for participation; encouraging a culture where all contributions are respected builds that much-needed safety net. An essential key to building this safety net is establishing your classroom as a stable structure that can hold student curiosity, experimentation, and mistakes. Take care to build consistency between sessions. Using callbacks to past discussions, maintaining a classroom journal, or introducing a themed narrative across lessons helps students to stay engaged and makes their learning journey more cohesive. Strategies such as think-pair-share or anonymous responses can help students build confidence, especially as they grow into less familiar areas of learning.
3. Use Storytelling and Creative Expression
Consistent use of storytelling in the classroom can deepen students’ connection with one another, their teachers, and their voice. Storytelling allows students to express novel ideas in a familiar format. It also helps to make abstract topics more accessible and memorable. But storytelling isn’t all about comfort and familiarity. Surprise elements, such as unusual prompts, playful props, music, or themed challenges can keep your students invested in the art of making narrative. Surprise and innovation also lead to improved memory and a sharper capacity to synthesize abstract concepts.
4. Incorporate Movement and Sensory Engagement
Integrating interactive elements such as hands-on activity, physical movement, and visual aid helps to combat student restlessness and increase their enjoyment of a lesson. If your material requires lecture, break it up with quick, student-centered activities; a movement break; or an opportunity for students to give feedback. Incorporating movement and sensory engagement helps to keep the energy levels up and supports varied learning styles.
5. Give Students Voice and Choice
Offering multiple ways to approach an assignment or allowing students to help determine class discussion fosters an invaluable sense of agency and control. Invite students to prepare and lead part of a lesson; they’ll integrate their perspectives into the experience, which benefits their teachers, their peers, and themselves. The resulting sense of autonomy will increase their ownership and investment in learning.
6. Be Flexible and Empathetic
It’s important that teachers and caregivers for students understand and respond to individual learning rhythms and needs. Having flexibility with pace, deadlines, and participation formats helps to build trust, reduce anxiety, and support engagement. Teaching students the importance of empathy from a young age helps them grow into more responsible and emotionally mature adults.
Conclusion
Student attention and participation need to be nurtured through intention, empathy, and creativity. It’s important to have an all-around approach towards student-centered learning. It is important that we encourage our teachers to experiment, listen, and evolve with their students. As teachers and caregivers, we can empower students to embrace the learning process and build confidence by infusing joy and curiosity into the daily routine.
A happy, comfortable classroom invites deeper engagement and holds its students in consistent positive regard. Introducing short activities like gratitude journaling, music, and light-hearted check-ins, while adding a bit of humor to them, creates a welcoming atmosphere where students are more likely to speak up, stay focused, and enjoy the learning process.
Mallory Hellman (she/her) is a writer, educator, and advocate for youth creativity. Since 2015, she has served as the Director of the Iowa Youth Writing Project, where she leads programs that bring free, high-quality writing opportunities to young people across Iowa. Mallory graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA in Fiction) and Harvard University (BA in English and American Literature) and has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, the Duke University Talent Identification Program, and in schools, shelters, and community centers throughout the Midwest. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications such as Tuesday Magazine and Forbes. In recognition of her leadership and community engagement, she received the Bravo Award from the Coralville Chamber of Commerce in 2015. In 2024, she co-founded the Experiential Education Collective, an organization devoted to promoting student-centered learning and hands-on creativity in schools and other educational spaces.