Distributing Discourse - Increasing Attention Spans

• The brain's ability to attend flows in a wave-like action with hills and valleys.  Average span is 7 minutes if you care about the topic.  Never let kids go without a "turn and talk", "get up and move to talk" or writing for productive content talk.  They will take the break whether you give it to them purposeful or not.  Become a clock watcher as a teacher to break up your instruction.      
  Exception is if students are reading or writing on a topic of intense personal interest. Then the “fire in the belly” for learning extends to 11 minutes.
  Evidence suggest that we must take engagement with informational text very seriously, focusing on active engagement and significant amounts of informational writing.