1. What does this picture make you think of?
Attention?

2. “What part of the brain are you using?”
Dana Foundation
These are brain scans, called fMRIs (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). They show the parts of the brain that are activated when we are doing different activities. Hearing words lights up the temporal lobes, seeing words lights up the occipital lobes, speaking lights up the motor cortex in the parietal lobes and generating words, which requires consciousthought, lights up the frontal lobes.
What parts of our brains “light up” (are activated) for attention?

3. What are you paying attention to right now?
A: The teacher
B: The clock
C: My hungry stomach
D: The pygmy in the corner of the room
Usually students will turn to look at the corners of the room with the last item. Ask them why that happened. It’s because our brains are designed to notice things that are new, different or changed.
But how does that happen?

4. Pay Attention!
When the teacher says, “Pay Attention!” what happens? Does he/she mean that you weren’t paying attention? Not really. We’re always paying attention to something. What the teacher wants is that you pay attention to what he/she wants to you to pay attention to.
So, what is attention? This diagram of the brain shows the Reticular Activating System. We are exposed to millions and millions of bits of information every second, but we can’t possibly pay attention to everything. The RAS is responsible for filtering out information and will let in about 2000 bits per second out of the million we’re exposed to. At this level of attention, the filter is involuntary. The RAS is governed by novelty – what is new? What is different? What has changed? Why? It’s a survival mechanism. If a man-eating tiger has just appeared on the scene, or if there is a smell of fire, or the sound of a gun, we had better pay attention to that.
So the RAS is the gatekeeper letting information get into other parts of our brain to be processed, stored, learned, connected with other information that we already have in our brains. We compare that information to information already stored and decide whether it’s important enough to process further.

5. Different Types of Attention
Sustained attention
Selective attention
Divided attention
Flexible attention
After information gets into our brains, filtered by the RAS, we start to actively control what we focus on (difference between involuntary attention and focused attention). And there are different kinds of attention. Talk about each kind of attention and have the class come up with examples of each – when they would be useful.

6.
Now we’re going to engage in an attention exercise. Have them watch the video. This is an example of selective attention.

7. What is another name for divided attention?
What do you say you’re doing when you’re doing more than one thing at a time?
How good are you at multitasking?
Let’s take a look at a different type of attention – divided attention. We all, and especially kids this age, think they can multitask. This exercise shows that there are some real limits and that dividing our attention can impact efficiency and accuracy. Do the multitasking exercise now and discuss, per the lesson plan.

8. Multitasking Experiment