Focusing Ability: Educational Success: A Helpful Guide for the Parent and for the Classroom Teacher

By Jan R. Knight

If you have a child or student who seems academically unmotivated, disinterested, and who has a tendency to give up . . .

Dont allow it!

The problem may be that they have focus disabilities that can be remedied at home and at school. In this guide to helping students, a retired teacher and counselor with forty-two years of experience shares practical strategies to:

revise your approach based on a childs learning style;

help children focus on the task at hand;

find the best place for a child to study; and

establish routines that promote success.

Before you start testing a child for Attention Deficit Disorder or other serious problems, you must give them a chance to focusand this means showing them how to do it.

Whether youre a parent or a teacher, youll find straightforward guidance that can change an underperforming child into a bright student poised for success with the lessons in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480863132

Jan R. Knight

Jan R. Knight earned a Bachelors Degree in English with minors in history and education and a Masters Degree in counseling. She has also earned above-masters hours for her National Board Certification in counseling and school counseling. She retired after a long career in education teaching English, creative writing, and chorus, and counseling with individual students as well as entire classrooms on motivation, college planning and personal issues. She also served as an academic/crisis counselor. Jan is also the author of Help! Im a Parent and Becoming a Memorable Teacher.

Book preview

Contents

PART I A HELPFUL GUIDE FOR THE PARENT

A. Focus Disability

B. Learning to Focus

C. Teaching Your Child to Focus

D. Using Learning Styles

E. Learning Styles Explained

1. Visual Learning Style

2. Oral Learning Style

3. Kinesthetic Learning Style

F. Identifying Your Child’s Learning Style(S)

G. Knowing About Left Brain/Right Brain

H. Using Practical Methods to Insure Focusing

1. Avoiding Distractions

2. Finding the Best Place for Your Child to Study

3. Avoiding Excuses

4. Getting Him Organized

5. Having A Set Time For Homework/Study

I. Solving the Problem of Taking Notes

J. Learning How to Study for Different Subjects

1. Mathematics

2. English Grammar

3. Reading/Literature

4. Sciences

5. Social Studies

K. Learning To Study For Different Types Of Tests

L. Staying Focused by Setting Goals

M. Finding a Result: Being Able to ‘Focus’

N. Giving the Responsibility to Your Child

PART II A HELPFUL GUIDE FOR THE TEACHER

A. Why Student Focusing is Important to the Teacher

B. Using the Learning Styles as You Teach

C. The Result: Focusing

D. Emphasizing Attendence

E. Having the Most Important Aspects of a Teacher

1. Having Knowledge of the Subject orPersonality to Teach or Both

2. Caring About the Students

3. Being Prepared for the Class

4. Learning to be Patient

5. Having a Sense of Humor

6. Making the Subject Relevant

7. Learning to Discipline

8. Being an Encourager

9. Being A Role Model

10. Using Your Life to Teach

G. The Final Test

Dedicated

to the students and

parents who are the examples in this book

who succeeded in overcoming

FOCUS DISABILITY.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the many parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends who have encouraged me to hurry up and get this work published so they could use it to help a child who is struggling to FOCUS and who needs help in order to be successful in school.

Introduction

What can I do? He says he doesn’t understand what she is saying when she presents the material! He is failing the grade and I don’t know how to help him! She was not the first parent almost in tears over her child’s apparent failure and subsequent discouragement.

Before we talked to him, however, we first talked to his teachers. They had observed the student’s lack of attention, his inability to keep up with what was happening in the classroom, and his failure to turn in over-night homework. When we asked the mother about the home assignments, she was unaware that he had work he was supposed to be doing there.

Then we called him into the meeting. This was not always done, but since he was not being totally honest with his mother about the homework, we decided that being confronted with that truth in front of the teachers would be helpful.

What we discovered, that I found so often, particularly among boys from fifth through ninth grades, was what many would call a lazy student. However, we decided that this was an immature pre-teen/teen who found it close to impossible to FOCUS on what was happening around him, whose attention would wander as the teacher was instructing, who didn’t do the homework because he didn’t write it down and couldn’t remember what it was, and who most often left notes from the teacher in his backpack which he never opened at home. We did not see a reason to test him for Attention Deficit Disorder unless our efforts did not change things.

So, a plan was devised to help him succeed. A plan which is covered in this book and which will help you as the parent when you are faced with a similar situation and which will help the teacher who is faced with this type student in the classroom.

During the forty-two years I spent in the classroom as an English teacher and then as a counselor, I worked with students and parents who were in need of advice and encouragement as they worked to overcome the child’s FOCUS DISABILITY. Because all of the students who were having this issue were boys,