How do you get kids to focus and listen during a lesson or story?

**To teach your kids to listen the first time, you must help them cultivate the habit of paying attention to what you say. Part of creating this habit is paying attention to how you talk to them.**

Why? Because if you tend to ask again and again (and again), and then either give up and do it yourself, or result to yelling.

First make sure they really hear you, when we get ready to do storytime or a lesson I try to be as animated as I can. I am excited about what I teach and if that shows through to them they become excited and curious about what I have to say.

Often right in the middle of the story they have a ton to say. I try to make time at the end of story for them to respond, ask questions, or say something.

I also try to get them involved in the story by asking questions regarding the book or reading one of the pages intentionally leaving a word that they can guess what it is .

EXAMPLE:

What do you think is happening here? (comprehension)
What makes you think that? (inferring)
What do you think will happen next? (predicting)
Why? (vocabulary and oral language)

The younger the child the shorter the attention span. When you first start reading aloud to your class or your child, their attention span may be short. One of the benefits of reading aloud is that over time, their attention spans will get longer.

Of course they are kids and most have selected listening and that’s completely normal. This is what works for me most of the time.