How often do you find yourself telling students to ‘focus’? Ask any teacher, and the answer is often “too many.” Despite the reminder, many still struggle to sustain attention, leaving both teachers and students feeling frustrated.
Students with ADHD need specific cues that support the underlying self-regulatory skills required for focus. This article provides practical strategies to target the self-regulatory processes essential for focus, helping students engage more consistently in the classroom.
Why Students with ADHD Struggle to Focus in School
Despite what the name “ADHD” implies, students with ADHD do not actually have a deficit of attention; what they have is difficulty regulating attention. Students with ADHD demonstrate inconsistent classroom performance due to difficulties with executive function skills: the mental processes that are responsible for cueing and directing the self-regulatory processes that we use to sustain attention. Therefore, when we are supporting students with ADHD , we need provide the explicit cues to substitute for the self-regulatory processes that are not functioning effectively.
Imagine a child learning to read. We wouldn’t just say, “Read!” over and over, expecting improvement.
Instead, we’d break down the task: “Sound it out,” “Blend the sounds,” or even scaffold by model reading the word for them.
Similarly, “focusing” encompass a range of cognitive and neural processes. For students with ADHD, effective refocusing prompts work in the same way, breaking down the act of focusing into manageable steps.
The Components of Focus: Sense, Select, and Sustain
When we direct students to “focus,” what are we truly asking?
For students to “focus,” they need to engage specific self-regulatory executive function processes including : sensing, selecting, and sustaining attention (McCloskey, 2008). These processes work together to help students become aware of relevant information, narrow their focus on important details, and maintain attention over time.
Sensory Attention
When we want a learner to pay attention to information from their external or internal environment, we are asking them to use the self-regulatory cue of “sense”.
Students with ADHD may struggle with sensory and situational awareness, often appearing inattentive or overly distracted by external stimuli. To a classroom teacher scanning a room of 20 or more students, these students may look disengaged, staring out the window or fiddling with something on their desk. Shouting “focus” may briefly capture their attention, but without a specific sense cue, their downed self-regulatory system will continue to struggle in an ambiguous environment.
Sense prompts encourage students to actively engage their senses and be aware of the sensory information in their environment. Effective cues include a sensory word and a clear description that tells the learner what to do and how to do it .
Instead of “ focus” try “Look at the smart board, equation number one. ”
Examples of Explicit Sense Prompts:
Instead of “ focus” …
- Listen to the next sentence.
- Listen to the direction I am about to say.
- Listen for the timer, that means we are packing up,
- Listen to your classmate’s answer.
- Listen to my voice level
- Look around the room for a
- Look at how I’m forming this letter.
- Look at the smartboard.
- Look around the room for something green.
- Look at the operational symbol
- Look at the writing line
- Look at the highlighted definition in this chapter.
- Look closely at what happens when I do ____.
- Feel how close you are to your group member.
- Feel the texture of the page.”
Selective Attention
Selective attention, or “select,” helps students focus on one specific detail, like a spotlight, while ignoring everything else. This targeted focus can be especially challenging for students with ADHD due to compounding difficulties with inhibition and prioritization. Selective attention can be supported best with prompts that clarify exactly where their attention should be directed.
Select prompts improve performance by guiding students to focus on a particular detail in their environment or task.
Instead of “Focus” provide an explicit selective attention prompt like ” Pay attention to the changes I make in this word.”
Examples of Explicit Select Prompts:
Instead of “Focus” try…
- Pay attention to where I start this paragraph.
- Pay attention to the direction I am going to say.
- Watch closely as I press this button.
- Notice the operation sign in the math problem.
- Pay attention to how this sentence begins.
- Notice how this letter is formed on the board.
- Observe what the character says in the next paragraph.
- Pay attention to where I start this paragraph.
Sustained Attention
Sustained attention requires ongoing energy and response inhibition, a core difficulty in learners with ADHD. We can cue and direct students to invest and maintain the right amount of energy over time by being explicit about the amount of energy the learner will need to bring to the task . Sustain prompts provide explicit guidance for how long the learner needs to stay attentive and energized throughout the task or lesson, not just at the start.
Instead of “you’re really going to need to focus” try “Hold your focus on this project for five more minutes, then we’ll check in.” Bonus points for making time visual by using a visual timer to represent the amount of time.
Examples of Explicit Sustain Prompts:
- Hold your focus on this project for two more minutes, then we’ll check in.
- Look at this painting for the next 2 minutes.
- You will need to watch the computer screen for the entire 10 minutes.
- You will need to stir the pudding for the next 2 minutes.
- We are going to read this passage for the next one minute.
- This will require a lot more energy than the last example.
- This one is longer than the one we just did.
- Keep your eyes on each line until we reach the end of the paragraph.
Reframing Support for ADHD: Key Takeaways
Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or therapist, it’s essential to reframe “focusing” as a skill to be developed, not a behavior to be enforced.
Think of how we support a struggling reader we wouldn’t use classroom management tactics to “help” them read. One would NEVER point out how the neighboring peer is doing a “good job sounding out the words”, or how that peer will be “going to recess today because he is blending his sounds like a 3rd grader”.
A child who has difficulty sensing, selecting and sustaining attention needs to be treated no differently than one that is struggling with phonological processing. Neither are willful non compliant behaviors and neither will be improved by “talking to” or punishment .
We must offer supportive, specific prompts for attention, treating focus like any other skill that needs scaffolding to develop. Instead of reminding a student to “focus” we can provide explicit self regulatory cues that inform the learner what we want them to sense, what they need to select and for how long.
When we improve the quality of the external cues required for self regulation we reduce the quantity of cues needed. This shift reduces frustration and stress for everyone in the classroom.
Tools
This one sheet teacher education resource provides a structured strategy to help educators move beyond generic reminders to “focus,” instead using specific cues that align with the self-regulatory processes students need to sustain attention effectively.
Perfect for implementation guidance.
References
McCloskey, G., Perkins, L.A., & Van Diviner, B. (2008). Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203893753
Huang, S. J., Yu, Y. H., Yang, C. J., & Tsai, M. H. (2020). A systematic review and meta-analysis of functional MRI studies of sustained attention in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. NeuroImage: Clinical, 28, 102428.
