Attention Curve Explorer — Match Lessons to When Pupils Focus
Visualise how focus rises and falls across the school day and place demanding subjects accordingly
Affects curve shape, peak times, and transition penalties
Morning peak hour (e.g., 9.5 = 9:30 AM)
Hours the peak shifts per year of age
Hours after morning peak for afternoon peak
Hours after morning peak for post-lunch dip center
Afternoon amplitude as fraction of morning amplitude
Base spread of gaussian peaks (hours)
Additional spread per year of age
Attention Capacity Curve
Predicted attention throughout the school day for age 10
Pupil attention is not flat across the school day. It climbs through the mid-morning, dips after lunch, and fades before the final bell — a pattern well documented in classroom research. The Attention Curve Explorer turns that pattern into an interactive graph so you can see, rather than guess, when your pupils are primed to absorb difficult material.
The tool lets you shape an attention curve for your context — adjust for a late start, a long lunch, or a split-shift day — and then overlay your subjects on it. Placing a demanding subject on a rising slope and a lighter one in the post-lunch trough is a small change that compounds across a whole year of lessons.
It is designed for timetable owners and teachers who want a principled way to answer a deceptively simple question: when in the day should the hardest lessons go? Instead of relying on habit or seniority, you get a clear, shareable visual that grounds the conversation in how attention actually behaves.
How to Use the Attention Curve Explorer
- 1
Set your school day
Enter your start time, break and lunch positions, and end time. The baseline attention curve reshapes to match the rhythm of your actual day.
- 2
Place your subjects
Drop each subject into a time slot. Demanding subjects carry more weight, so the tool shows how well each lesson lines up with the available attention at that moment.
- 3
Read the alignment
The graph highlights mismatches — a hard subject sitting in a low-attention trough — and confirms the placements that use pupils' focus well.
- 4
Adjust and share
Move subjects until demanding lessons ride the high points of the curve, then use the visual to explain and justify the arrangement to colleagues.
Why Explore the Attention Curve
Interactive daily curve
A live graph of rising and falling focus that you can reshape to fit your school's hours, breaks, and shift structure.
Subject-to-slot alignment
Overlay lessons on the curve to see instantly whether your hardest subjects fall on peaks or in troughs.
Post-lunch dip awareness
The curve models the well-known slump after lunch, helping you avoid parking demanding subjects in the day's weakest window.
Evidence for scheduling debates
A shareable visual replaces "because we always have" with a clear rationale grounded in how attention moves through the day.
Free and browser-based
No account, no install, no data collection — explore as many day structures as you like directly in your browser.
Attention Curve Explorer — Frequently Asked Questions
- What is an attention curve?
- It is a simple model of how the average pupil's ability to focus changes through the day — typically rising in the morning, dipping after lunch, and declining toward the end. It helps you decide when to schedule the most demanding lessons.
- Is the curve scientifically exact for my pupils?
- It reflects general patterns from classroom research, not a measurement of your specific pupils. Use it as a well-grounded starting point and adjust it to what you observe in your own school.
- How does this differ from Schedule MRI?
- The Attention Curve Explorer focuses on one dimension — matching subjects to the time of day — as an interactive graph. Schedule MRI scores a full weekly timetable across several friction patterns at once. They complement each other.
- Can I model a split-shift or half-day timetable?
- Yes. Adjust the start, break, lunch, and end points to match any day structure, including split shifts and half-days, and the curve adapts accordingly.
- Do I need any pupil data to use it?
- No. You only enter the shape of your day and your subjects. There is no login and nothing is uploaded — everything runs locally in your browser.
- How does it help with real scheduling?
- It gives you a clear rule of thumb — hard subjects on the rising and peak parts of the curve, lighter ones in the troughs — that you can carry directly into your timetable and defend with a visual.
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