Shared Attention Rationale PDF
Intent
At Hawthorns we want our children to see the value of engaging with others. We know that for this to happen we must EARN children’s attention by providing irresistible opportunities to engage and take part. Being able to share attention is the foundation of all learning.
We want our children to be intrinsically motivated to notice , experience and take part in learning opportunities.
The shared attention framework is split into 5 areas and follows the progression of the ‘typically’ developing child. The Framework is designed to be easily integrated into everyday activities as well as lend its self to specific focused programmes such as intensive interaction, the Curiosity Programme and Attention Autism.
When children can see that we are worth paying attention to, we can use this intrinsic motivation to broaden their interests and create further learning opportunities.
Implementation
The Shared attention framework is split into 5 areas:
Explorative Attention;
Paying fleeting attention to new or novel items, or people, through exploration.
Focusing Attention;
Paying attention to single items or people for short periods of time
Sustained Attention;
Keeping attention on an item or person for long enough to find something out, or watch a person complete a sequence of actions to achieve an end goal e.g. see how you activate a toy, watch somebody build a tower and knock it down or listen to new information in order to gain new knowledge.
Shifting Attention;
The ability to temporarily shift your attention from one activity to another and then back to the original task e.g. returning attention back to an activity after an interruption, shifting attention to somebody asking a question or after taking a turn or shifting attention to a new person adding information to an activity and then refocusing back to the lead adult.
Transferring Attention;
This focuses on the skill of transferring information from one activity to another, or moving from one task and engaging in another. E.g. seeing an activity being modelled, remembering the information and recreating it in a different area or applying what you have previously been taught to a new activity.
We know it is important that we generalise our children’s attention focus beyond limited stimuli and activities. We purposefully create learning opportunities, both structured and open ended to encourage this to happen. We use our core principles of making activities structured, predictable, visual, engaging, hands on and most importantly, intrinsically motivating.
For our earliest learners, we use intensive interaction and the curiosity approach alongside incidental teaching to create and encourage opportunities to engage and take part. At this stage we want our pupils to be curious about the world and people around them.
When we can see children begin to be curious about what is happening around them, we want to provide opportunities for them to sustain their attention to people or activities. At this early stage we use the Attention Autism programme to provide a structured, predicable approach, alongside many naturally occurring activities. The Attention Autism program helps us to provide a structured learning opportunity for our pupils to learn to focus, sustain and shift their attention to activities and others.
Once pupils demonstrate the ability to focus, sustain and shift their attention across multiple stimuli, activities and across environments, we know that pupils are ready for more formal teaching opportunities. Using the same principles, we can teach core academics, and other cross curricula subjects.
At this point. teaching may be ‘themed’ towards a particular topic or curriculum area. The onus here is on the adults to make sure they keep the invitation to learn irresistible.
The model we use lends itself completely to the teaching sequence we use in all subjects across school.
Below is an example of how this looks;
Review: focus attention quickly to recap prior learning.
Teach: Sustain attention to an adult/ activity long enough to learn something new.
Practise: Transfer attention from group instruction to have a go at putting new learning into practise.
Apply: Transition attention from the group learning to individual learning where you can show what you now know.
This creates a seamless transition from pre-formal, to informal, to semi-formal, and finally, formal learning.
Impact
Through the Shared attention framework and associated approaches, our pupils will learn that we are worth paying attention to. Our children will see the value in our learning opportunities and be motivated to take part.
Children will ultimately develop a love of people and learning. The impacts of this are invaluable.
Our pupils will be motivated to pay attention to, and learn from, a wide range of activities, people and experiences. This will expand their interests, and knowledge. They will not only learn more about the world around them, but about themselves and others.
