Middle School Attention Span

How long is a middle school-age child's attention span?

While it's said that a middle school-age child's attention span is between eight and fourteen minutes, we actually have instructional periods that are much longer than that set attention span time. That's because during the first part of the instructional period the teacher is modeling, demonstrating or showing the children how to do something, how to think about something or presenting new material in some way. For the rest of the period, however, the children are working on their own and they're practicing. They're getting to have concrete experiences with the math, with the new vocabulary, with thinking about a problem or some new information in social studies. So depending on whether they're on an input mode or an output mode, what we call "receptive" or "expressive", the attention span and the time on task can be much longer.

How can I determine if my middle school-age child has a short attention span?

These days, with the role of media, television, cell phones and text messaging, it would be hard to see - in a home situation - a middle school child that was having trouble paying attention. They might be off-task and not able to complete their chores or their jobs at home. We'd really probably be hearing from the school that, "Your child may be drifting off or daydreaming or not staying on-task during the school day."

How can I help my middle school-age child increase their attention span?

Well, sometimes children get off-task because the end goal doesn't seem attainable to them. If we can help them break down their tasks into smaller component parts, for example, the homework at night. Quite often a middle school child will bring home up to two hours worth of homework and be expected to complete it all in one sitting. If we intervene and help the child to break down the tasks, say, let's finish these 14 problems now and then we'll take a break, we'll do something else and we'll come back and we'll do another 14 problems or then we'll do the social studies homework. This can help the child to develop the type of skills that one needs to persevere at a task.