Meaning:

Concentrating on something means giving all your attention to it. 

(Collins Dictionary)

Why is this important?

Concentration is like a muscle that requires regular exercise to strengthen. Everyone can learn strategies to improve their ability to focus and sustain attention. Most children are able to concentrate on activities that are fun and intrinsically enjoyable. It is the ones that are more boring, difficult or just less enjoyable that really challenge their focus. Yet this ability to concentrate and sustain attention on all kinds of tasks is crucially important, because it helps children learn and improve, which leads to self-confidence and positive self-esteem.

Concentration is a lot like mindfulness, the ability to pay attention to one thing in the moment, and it has been shown to have innumerable mental health benefits, from increased happiness and stress management to improved academic and test performance. For mindfulness to work, you have to focus.

When learning to concentrate, children also learn to:

• be focussed

• achieve their goals/purpose

• give attention to a task

• pay attention to detail

• be a good listener

• improve memory

• ignore meaningless thoughts