Distraction Fads

Fidgets, are they the miracle device that can help hyper students focus, or are they engineered by the devil to create more distractions in the classroom? If you surveyed teachers across the country you could probably find individuals that fell anywhere along that spectrum. Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t encourage their use in my classroom, but I also rarely have issues with them. When fidget spinners first got popular a couple of years ago it was apparent that students were not bringing them into the classroom to help them focus, they had them to play with. To me, it was a similar issue as cell phones, create a policy and stick to it. If you were using the fidget spinner to bring attention to yourself or if your classmates around you were focusing on the spinner, it was going in my drawer. After a couple of weeks of students getting fidget spinners taken away, they weren’t as much of an issue. The other thing that is very helpful in my classroom is the number of projects students work on. In the woodshop, spinners weren’t an issue because they were working on a woodworking project. In my engineering classes students spend so much time creating and drawing that they either don’t get the fidgets out, or they are often helpful in keeping them focused on their own project, rather than their friends in the classroom. According to an ADDitude article, providing a physical outlet is beneficial to students with ADHD to help them focus. The fidget device is supposed to help with this. At times when students are able to use these devices without distracting other students or demanding too much of their own attention, I have seen them be very effective. An Education Week blog about fidget spinners mentions a student that points out that she has noticed they are bigger distraction at “inappropriate times”. I agree completely with that statement. The times I noticed the spinners as a problem were the times I was giving whole group instruction. Those are the times where it is very easy for students to be distracted by anything other than the teacher. Because of this, I certainly understand why teachers that spend more time in whole group instruction are unsatisfied with the devices in their classroom’s. Here is a brief article by Beverly Bird that shows fidgets that might be helpful to students, and adults, including one that is designed to be less distracting to others.

I would be happy to hear what kind of fidgets you have seen students use and what your thoughts are on the devices.