Focus Exercises You Can Do in Ten Minutes a Day
A focus exercise is a short piece of work a child stays with on purpose. It has a beginning and an end. Nothing else runs at the same time. Pitch it just below what your child can hold. Stop while it is still going well. Our position is that the material to use is the schoolwork in front of them.
TL;DR
- A focus exercise is a short piece of work a child stays with on purpose. Our position is that the material to use is the work they already have to do.
- Pitch it just below what your child can hold now. End it while it is still going well, not when it falls apart.
- Watch the half hour before focused work. An ordinary task straight after a fast, high-stimulation activity can feel flat and harder to start.
- Build movement into the day for what it does for the child. Movement builds movement, and on its own it has not been shown to build reading or writing.
- If a program promises that games or drills will improve school results, check that claim.
What counts as a focus exercise here
A focus exercise is a short piece of work a child stays with on purpose. It has a beginning and an end. Nothing else runs at the same time. That is the whole definition. It does not need a screen, an app or a special material.
Our position is that the material to use is the work the child already has to do. In our view, attention improves with practice at the thing being attended to. That means the reading, the writing or the math itself. It does not mean a separate exercise done instead of it. So we would use the ten minutes on the real work. We would not use them on something invented to look like training.
How to pitch it
Focus is trained the way a skill is trained, in short repetitions that get slightly harder. Four things make the difference between practice and a fight.
Start just below what they can already hold. If your child reliably manages three minutes, start at two and a half. In the first week, the point is that they succeed. It is not to stretch them.
End it while it is still going well. In the families we work with, a short piece that ends in success sets up the next try. In our experience, a long one that ends in a fight sets up an argument about tomorrow. Stop early on purpose.
Build the break in before your child stalls. Decide ahead of time that the ten minutes is two fives, with a break between them. That is our practice, not a finding. We hold no study of breaks and attention in children. Breaks are worth trying before pushing a child through unbroken effort.
Make the finish visible. Draw a line through a finished task. Or use a stack of two cards instead of one. A child who cannot see that they finished has nothing to be right about.
Five exercises that fit in ten minutes
Each of these practices one of the jobs we see in attention. Or it practices the memory job that attention leans on. Pick one and run it for a week. Do not run all five once.
1. The finished piece. Take the real homework. Cut it into a piece the child can definitely finish. That might be four problems, not twenty. Or one paragraph, not the page. Put the rest where they cannot see it. The skill being practiced is staying with something to the end. A piece that size makes that possible.
2. Read to the end of the line. Read one line at a time, out loud, with a finger under the words. It is short. It gives you both something to notice. Does the finger stay with the voice? Where does it stop?
3. Copy it exactly. Copy four lines of anything, so that the copy matches. Copying is dull, and that is the point. It is practice at staying with a task that has no excitement of its own.
4. The two-part instruction. Give one instruction with two parts. For example: "Put the blue book on the shelf and bring me the pencil case." See what comes back. Then give the same kind of instruction in one part. Which one they manage tells you which job is hard. Holding the instruction is one job. Staying with the task is another.
5. Work with something going on. Once the quiet version is easy, run the same short task with the radio on low. Or run it with a brother or sister in the room. We see leaving the rest of the room alone as its own job. It is worth practicing, not only removing.
Watch the half hour before
One change worth trying tonight is not to the exercise at all. It is to what comes right before it.
After a fast, high-stimulation activity, an ordinary task straight afterward can feel flat and harder to start. That is about the order activities come in, not about a particular child. The order is worth managing on its own terms. In practice, that means no games, phones or treats in the half hour before focused work. Save the stimulating thing for later in the evening.
Whether screens moved school results is a separate question, with a separate answer. We do not run the two questions together.
Movement, and what it is for
Movement is worth building into a child's week for its own sake. What it is established to improve is movement. That means coordination, motor skill and body awareness. Movement builds movement, and it has not been shown to build reading or writing. Movement breaks help children come back to a task. That is worth building into the day for what it does for the child.
Budde and colleagues (2008) ran an experiment on movement and attention. They compared ten minutes of coordinative exercise with a regular physical education lesson. They used an attention test, and heart rate was matched. The coordinative session came out ahead. Ninety-nine teenagers were analyzed. They were 13 to 16 years old, at an elite performance school. It was one session, with no resting comparison.
Two later trials did not find the coordinative advantage Budde found. Van den Berg and colleagues (2016) ran the closest thing there is to a test of Budde's dose. It was twelve minutes, not ten. They found no effect of any kind of exercise. Altermann and Gröpel (2023) found that endurance, strength and coordination all improved attention on the same test. Coordination had no advantage. That trial never measured heart rate. So it does not test what made Budde's study interesting. Its one comparison at matched effort also found no difference. Whether the coordinative kind does better has not been properly retested since 2008. The idea is not disconfirmed, and it is not supported.
The finding we would build on is a different one. Ng-Knight and colleagues (2022; online 2021) ran the better controlled of the two martial-arts trials we hold. They randomized children one by one. The assessors did not know which group a child was in. Attention improved, and conduct problems fell. What carried the gain in teacher-rated attention was the children coming to value the activity. It was not a gain in executive function. Enjoyment is what produces the consistency, and consistency is what makes a habit hold. So find the movement your child actually likes.
What these exercises are not for
This is the part worth reading before you buy anything.
Practice reaches the thing it is practice at. A child who practices staying with a task gets better at staying with a task. That is the claim we make. Suppose a child does a general exercise instead of the schoolwork. It does not follow that their schoolwork gets better later.
Whether general exercises improve schoolwork has been tested. The people who tested it had no product to sell. Melby-Lervåg, Redick and Hulme (2016) pooled the working-memory training studies. They found that people got reliably better at working-memory tasks. Against a treated control, they found no convincing carry-over to word reading, reading comprehension or arithmetic. Simons and colleagues (2016) reviewed the wider set of programs. They found the same shape. They found good evidence for the trained task, less for closely related tasks, and little for distant ones. Researchers still argue about whether some limited carry-over happens. So it is still an open question. Strong, Torgerson, Torgerson and Hulme (2011) pooled the controlled trials of Fast ForWord. It is a listening program sold for language and reading difficulties. They found no evidence it was effective for children's oral language or reading difficulties.
One more caution applies to reports of gains, not only to products. Foroughi and colleagues (2016) posted two flyers. Some adults answered a flyer that promised brain training. After one hour of training, they improved on a reasoning test. Other adults answered a plain flyer and did the same hour. They showed no significant gain. That is a caution, not a method. A gain someone reports can be the expectation they came in with. It was measured in adults. This study tells us nothing about children. It is still a reason to ask two things before you believe a reported gain. What was measured, and in whom?
None of this is a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to be specific about what you are buying and what you are practicing.
What to notice, and what we cannot tell you
Two things are worth writing down. You can see both at a kitchen table. One is how long your child stays with something. The other is how they get back to it after a break. Compare them with your child two weeks ago, on the same kind of task. Do not compare with anybody else.
We hold no measurement of how much any strategy on this page improves attention. We hold none of what practicing focus does to school results.
In the classroom
Cut the task, not the expectation. Four problems finished, not twenty started. The child can see which one happened.
Say what to do, not how to be. Say "eyes on the second problem," not "concentrate."
Give one instruction with two parts. Then give one with a single part. Which one comes back tells you which job to work on. Is it holding the instruction, or staying with the task?
One sentence for an email home: "He works better in short pieces with a clear end. So I am cutting the work into chunks he can finish. I let him mark each one off. I wanted you to know what I am seeing."
Key Takeaways
A focus exercise is a short piece of work a child stays with on purpose. Our position is that the material to use is the work they already have to do.
Pitch it just below what they can hold now. End it while it is still going well.
Change the half hour before the work, not only the work. An ordinary task straight after a fast, high-stimulation activity can feel flat and harder to start.
Movement belongs in the week for what it does for the child. Movement builds movement, and on its own it has not been shown to build reading or writing.
If a program promises that games or drills will improve school results, check that claim. Ask for independent evidence that the gains reached the schoolwork.
Watch how long your child stays with something and how they get back to it. Compare it with your child two weeks ago.
Pick the shortest real piece of homework your child has. Cut it in half. Put the other half out of sight. Stop when the first half is done, even if the evening is going well. Notice whether tomorrow starts differently.
”What to do tonightWhat to use next
Common questions from parents
How long should a focus exercise be?
Short enough that your child finishes it. If they reliably manage three minutes now, start at two and a half. Add time slowly. The shape we use is ten minutes in total. We split it into two pieces, with a break between them. To us, the length that matters is the one that ends in success, not in an argument.
Do focus exercises help with schoolwork?
Practice reaches the thing it is practice at. So exercises made of the schoolwork itself have a route to the schoolwork. In our view, a general exercise done instead of it does not have that route. Simons and colleagues (2016) reviewed programs sold on the promise of wider gains. They had no product to sell. They found good evidence for the trained task, less for closely related tasks, and little for distant ones. Researchers still argue about whether some limited carry-over happens.
Are focus apps and brain games worth buying?
Ask one question before you pay. Where is the independent evidence that the gains reached reading, attention or grades? Or did they only reach the game itself? Simons and colleagues (2016) reviewed that work. They found good evidence for the trained task, less for closely related tasks, and little for distant ones. The debate is still open. So read the answer you get. Do not assume there is no answer.
My child can do this for me and not at school. Why?
Different conditions rather than different children. At home the task is short. The room is quieter. Someone is sitting next to them. Tell the teacher exactly what you are doing. The size of the piece and the visible finish are the parts a teacher can copy.
Does exercise before homework help my child focus?
Movement is worth building into the day for what it does for the child. On attention itself, the studies we hold do not settle it. Budde and colleagues (2008) compared ten minutes of coordinative exercise with a regular physical education lesson. The coordinative exercise did better on an attention test. It was one session, with 99 teenagers at an elite performance school. The comparison was another kind of exercise, not rest. So it does not tell you whether moving beats not moving. Two later trials found no advantage for the coordinative kind. Whether the coordinative kind does better has not been properly retested since 2008. Find movement your child enjoys, because enjoyment is what produces the consistency.