Why students Zone Out constantly

Students aren’t zoning out because they’re bored — they’re zoning out because their brains literally can’t do what we’re asking them to do.

In this episode, Cheri Dotterer, MS, OTR, and math leader Jonily break down the neuroscience behind attention, dopamine, novelty, and why every classroom hits the same predictable “zoning-out moment.”

You’ll learn:

• Why students can only focus for their age in minutes
• The 7-second dopamine cycle that sabotages attention
• Why novelty (singing, movement, humor) instantly resets the brain
• Why music activates learning before visual or auditory channels
• Why rectangles are the single most powerful structure in math
• How interleaving and iteration outperform linear teaching
• How skip-counting by 12s rewires numerical fluency
• Why U.S. math scores suffer — and how to fix it tomorrow
  
  

If you’ve ever asked, “Why do my students suddenly check out?” — this episode is the answer.
 Drop your favorite math jingles in the comments.

👉 Want to experience the full workshop?
 You can sign up to experience one workshop for just $47. The link is here.

https://disabilitylabs.com/live-webinar/mastery-math-method-dec2025/register

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 — Welcome to Tier One Interventions

00:22 — Why focus equals age in minutes

01:05 — The 7-second dopamine attention loop

01:40 — Students WANT to focus but their brains can’t

02:10 — Novelty triggers that instantly reset attention

03:25 — Why music activates learning before anything else

03:54 — Math jingles that rewire memory

04:28 — Why skip-counting by 12s accelerates mastery

05:08 — Rectangles: the most powerful structure in math

05:45 — Whisper counting + dot arrays for deep understanding

06:30 — The “loud number” mistake and why it’s productive

07:30 — Iteration vs. repetition: the real difference

08:18 — Interleaving: the brain’s preferred learning method

09:05 — Jumping from 2 twelves to 12 twelves (nonlinear learning)

10:05 — Why U.S. math scores are failing

11:30 — The winning formula: structure + novelty + repetition

12:05 — Wrap-up and $47 workshop invitation

🎯 Ready to Change Math Outcomes in 10 Days?

👉 Join our FREE Masterclass for school leaders, teachers, and OTs:
 https://disabilitylabs.com/calendar

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🔗 Stay Connected

🌐 Website: https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/mastery-math-bundle
📧 Disability Labs Community: https://disabilitylabs.com/community/3d-learning-lounge-1

🎙️ Credits:
Host: Cheri Dotterer
Co-Host: Jonily Zupancic
Production: Disability Labs Podcast Network

🧠 Resources Mentioned:

Mastery Math Method Level One (Lifetime Access): https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/mastery-math-bundle
Mastery Math Method Level Two (Annual Subscription): https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/mastery-math-method-group-coaching

⚠️ Disclaimer: The content shared in this video is for educational purposes only and does not replace your district’s policies or individualized education plans. Always consult with your instructional team before implementing new strategies.

🏷️ Hashtags

#MathIsMessy #Tier1Interventions #MasteryMathMethod #BrainBasedLearning #REWIREMethod #OTinSchools #TeacherMindset

Creators and Guests

Host

Cheri Dotterer

Hacking barriers to writing success, dysgraphia No ✏️ Required. 30-sec@time Speaker | Podcast Host | Author | Consultanthttps://t.co/eM1CXSUIoZ

Host

Jonily Zupancic

Middle School Math Instructional Coach

What is Tier 1 Interventions?

Math intervention, writing intervention, neurobiology, and cognitive-based learning - Jonily Zupancic and Cheri Dotterer are sharing how to incorporate them into your classroom. Jonily is a secondary math teacher and instructional coach for math K-12. Cheri is an occupational therapist specializing in neurology-based treatment across the lifespan and a Strategy-based Interventionist. Jonily secretly calls Cheri her Lesson Plan Whisperer because Cheri is always in her head, reminding her of the foundations of development before academics begin.

They met in 2018 and have been talking ever since. Together, they have discovered the Miracle Math Classroom. This classroom embeds all math standards from Kindergarten to twelfth grade, plus neuro-based interventions that improve proficiency and boost student engagement. Both gifted and learning support students thrive using the interventions they share, plus all students in between. Using cognitive enhancing techniques strategically placed in the lesson plan, students learn more and enjoy school more, and fewer students get removed from critical instruction for Tier Three Interventions.

Jonily has discovered how to teach all Kindergarten through algebra math standards using twelve, that’s right, twelve Reference Tasks. They include the Pizza Problem, 120-Chart, Paper Folding, Making Rectangles, Quick Dots, Locker Problem, Jesse and Kay, Geoboard, Candy Problem, Paint Problem, Staircase, and the Function Machine.

Cheri uses Body-Brain Anchors to ignite the flame inside everyone’s brain for learning. Whether a person is five or 90, her strategy-based interventions will ignite that flame. These Brain-Body Anchors include the Handstand Flip, Interlaced Bilateral Integration, and the Body Sentence Alphabet.

Together, they connect the puzzle behind math instruction and instructional delivery alongside these cognitive-enhancing activities to maximize math education for all students.

Join us live on the third Saturday of the month, sans July, for the math behind the Reference Task. Every live event is approximately 2.5 contact hours. The first 30-ish minutes become this podcast. To hear the entire training, join our membership program.

Please note: we will not record on holiday weekends. Join our mailing list for updates on dates.

To join us live, register at Tier1interventions.com. The 2.5-hour sessions include the PowerPoint slides, additional audio files of Jonily teaching the Reference Task, resources from Cheri, and much more. A subscription to these 2.5-hour Workshops is $97/month or $947/year.

Membership includes:
*Approximately 27.5 hours of direct training per year
*Audio files of Jonily's Hear Me Teach segments - complete
*PowerPoint Slides to grab and use in your Magic Math Classroom
*Resources from Jonily and Cheri for you and your students
*A copy of Math DYSconnected when released.

Or, you can listen to the first segment on your favorite podcast app for free; no membership is required. No matter how you listen, you will come away with golden nuggets that will transform your classroom.

Reach out to Jonily: [e-mail]
Reach out to Cheri: [e-mail]

Tier1Interventions.com

Hey everybody and welcome to Tier One
Interventions podcast, where we look

at your core classroom and we try to
maximize your gifts and help you reach

every student with their math, with their
writing, and with their reading skills.

But we concentrate mostly on math here
at Tier One Interventions podcast.

And our math leader, miss Jonily, is
ready to share some gold nuggets today.

Welcome to the podcast Jonily, and
they are gold nuggets because these

last few weeks have been a whirlwind.

I'm gonna kinda take us back a little
bit, and there's another community that

I teach called a Math teacher Mastermind,
and I'm going to launch our session today.

It's not our age level right now,
because I at 50 years old, cannot

attend for 50 minutes probably
without some kind of break.

But our, my freshman, 14, 15 year
olds, it's funny that they will do

that every day about that time because
what they're telling me is I'm zoning

out now, which actually connects to
this research that says that they can

only focus for about their age now.

Sherry, do you wanna say anything on that?

I know you're big into that
and if you don't that's fine.

No, you said it very
plainly and very direct.

Okay, excellent.

That's exactly the case.

But there it gets to a point where our
executive function skills around age

35 start going the other direction.

That's why you at 50.

Me At 61, yes.

I'm at telling everybody my age today.

That's why our attention
spans gets to be shorter.

And then as our brains start to
age, the time decreases, but that

dopamine hit that everybody wants.

And that's why scrolling on
Facebook is addicting happens and

is re-triggered every seven seconds.

That's why you need it
again every seven seconds.

So it's perfectly makes sense why
after about 15 minutes the kids are

saying, hello, I'm zoning out now.

Can you help refocus me?

Create another novelty trigger,
create that dopamine hit.

And what I have done since the beginning
of the year is after we transition, after

warmup, and we start to get into the
lesson, because sometimes we'll only be

on warmup for about six or seven minutes,
sometimes longer, and then we transition

to the lesson, or I start going over the
warmup depending on what that next six or

seven minutes look like in my classroom.

I purposefully, since the beginning
of the year, after about 14 minutes,

I will randomly break out in song.

And I do that deliberately
and intentionally.

It's not about mathematics and
there is a song of the day.

One day it might just be, and girls
just wanna have, they just wanna,

it has nothing to do with the math.

It's totally random.

And all of a sudden the kids are
like, now, in the first couple

weeks when they met me, they
were like, get me out of here.

I don't know what's happening right now,
but now they're asking for it because it's

just funny to watch their teacher do that.

But subconsciously they're asking
for it because after about 14

minutes they need triggered again.

They want to focus, they want to
learn, they want to keep hearing me,

but they're fighting with their brain.

They're fighting with their brain
because they want to so bad, but

their brain isn't letting them.

So they need something that's
going to trigger their brain again.

And that is something that I have done all
year long, deliberately and intentionally.

Now it'll start really connecting to math.

And I actually have a couple little math
jingles and a previous colleague of mine,

I'm gonna say her name 'cause if she
ever listens, she'll probably freak out.

Her name is Julie Metheny.

I taught with her my very
first years of teaching.

She started teaching before me, and then
I was her eighth grade teaching partner.

So her name is Julie Metheny.

And she is an amazing
person, first of all.

And we haven't talked in years.

I think I've liked a few things on
Facebook with her and her with me.

And, but we literally, in, in dozen, a
dozen or more years, we haven't connected,

but she actually made up multiple math.

This was her bread and butter.

She made up, she's a math teacher and she
made up math songs to lots of different

concepts and it was absolutely beautiful.

Now, in my first years of teaching,
I would not break out in song with

my kids 'cause I just, I cared more
about what people thought of me.

When we're younger, we do now I
don't care what anybody thinks of me.

And so she would then, oh, back
then it was on cassette tapes, so

she would record on cas cassette
tapes, her doing the songs, and then

I would play them in my room for my
kids, so I didn't have to sing them.

But I think I, I wanted to hold onto
this music thing a little longer.

And now that Sheri said that, and
Sherry, you said music triggers before

auditor and something, you said something
visual something and I didn't get it.

We always talk about the fact that
there's three different learning styles,

vision, auditory, and movement, but.

Music and rhythm are going
to trigger even before those.

Okay,

so I just put a new post in school.

It says, what math jingles
do you use in your classroom?

So later on after we're done
go ahead and let me know what

jingles you use in your classroom.

And there's actually one that I
use and I can't take credit for it.

And I, since I'm talking and
fci I'll have to find the link.

But it's the 12 song.

I've sang it to all of you before and
with my second graders in the last

couple weeks with my second graders,
we've been skip counting by twelves.

I do this with kinder in first grade
also, and I do it this early in the year.

We skip count by twelves and teachers
are like, I can't have you come in and

skip count by twelves in my classroom.

They don't even know how
to like count by ones.

And I'm like, yeah, but that's the
point because math isn't sequential.

See, we have to do a lot
of outta context math.

We have to do what cognitive science
calls interleaving, some things that

are outta context outta the ordinary.

Ordinary.

One of the reasons that we have so
many deficits and math scores are so

dismal in the US is because we try
to stay linear and sequential and

we don't do certain concepts until
kids have mastered the previous ones.

That is not how math should be taught
because that is not how math is learned.

So I wanna randomly go in and
have kids skip count by 12.

Now what I do in those earlier
grades to do this is I have quick

dots, a set of dots that there are
12 of 'em, and we whisper count.

So to get to the first number, we whisper
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

And so once we count that chunk of
dots, there's 12 dots in a chunk.

In a rectangle.

I want you to hear this because in our
level two math session, rectangles are the

most essential for every kids to engage
in every week of school, every week of

school, no matter what the grade level.

I need kids seeing rectangles every
week of school, every grade level.

In mathematics, I need
kids seeing rectangles.

There are so many variations of
rectangles, and that is really

what today's session is about.

But I have quick dots, 12 dots
in the form of a rectangle.

The dimensions are three by four.

My second graders know
what dimensions mean.

It means how tall, how long.

It means that a rectangle is two
dimensions because we name it

with two numbers, three by four.

And so my kids have all
this lingo and terminology.

Now they circle 12 on a hundred.

Charter, 120 chart, because
that's the first number we count

when we skip count by twelves.

It's the first number 12,
the second number we count.

We can whisper count to figure it
out so we can touch dots again.

13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24. Now, yesterday when I

was doing this with a group of second
graders, when I got to 7, 8, 9, some

of the kids said nine 'cause they
saw the rectangle of 12, but in their

head they wanted it so bad to be nine.

So when we got to 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 21, like they yelled 21 and I knew

they were going to, 'cause they yelled
nine on the previous instead of 12.

So only a couple kids.

So we call that the loud number.

So two kids were like 21 and then we,
the rest of the class kept going 22, 23.

And so they just experientially
caught, oh shoot, it's not 21.

I'm not sure really sure why it's not 21.

But nobody, and then we
continued, they saw, then there,

there were three more dots.

22, 23, 24.

So I said, okay, how much is one?

12? 12? How much are two twelves?

24. And they're seeing this with dots
with a visual touching them and the

dots are arranged in a rectangle.

This is all very
deliberate and intentional.

And then they have their
chart, their number chart.

They now circle 24.

So then I'll reiterate
how much is 1 12 12.

How much are two twelves?

24. What's the first number you
circle on your one 20 chart?

12. What's the second number?

You circle?

24. So it's always doing things
the same thing in a different

way with a different flavor.

Now we whisper again from 24 to know
the next number that, and then I'll

have kids predict, what do you think?

Before we whisper, what do you
think the next number's gonna be?

25, 30, 27. They don't know.

So then we whisper count.

Okay, we just said 24 was our loud number.

Let's whisper.

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33.

Nope, nope.

34, 35, 36. So how much are three twelves?

36. What are you gonna
circle on your chart?

36. So it's very
repetitive, but very visual.

It's very tactile because
they can touch dots.

Very iterative.

So huge thing I want kids to see
and experience every week at every

grade level in math is rectangles.

The second thing I want them to
see and experience, I'm gonna say

every week, but I'm, I really mean
every day, every week is iterations.

Iterations.

In the math standards.

The very first year that the word
iterate is in the standards, in the

actual standards document is grade one.

We do not have kids iterating enough.

Those are in the content standards.

It says iterate.

Now, in the mathematical practices, the
practice standards, there is a standard

called repeated reasoning, which is
very closely aligned to iterating.

So I need kids to do this a lot.

Now you might be listening to this
and thinking, that's great John

Lee, I'll do whatever you say,
but I don't know what that means.

Pin that for a moment.

You've seen an example of it, but pin it.

Then we say, how much are four twelves?

Let's do it together.

Let's whisper count as a class.

Then I released the kids and I
said, okay, go ahead on your own

and you're gonna circle how much
5, 12, 6, 12, 7 twelves are.

Now they had one 20 charts.

So one of the questions I wrote
on the board is, how many skip

counts by twelves is one 20?

And then I wrote it a different way.

How many twelves is one 20?

'cause that was the last
number on their chart.

And then the next question I wrote on
the board as they were working then on

their own was, how much is 12 twelves?

You see how that jumped from a very
linear, iterative process to very

non-linear, out of context, cognitive
science calls that inner leaving.

So I'm using science of
learning for mathematics.

In those examples I just gave.

Yes.

Some of what we do needs to be iterative,
repetitive, linear, but there needs to

be lots of jolts of what I'm gonna call
novelty, because novelty motivates us.

Novelty re-triggers the
brain, expect the unexpected.

And the science behind
novelty is interleaving.

I use the phrase out of context
because for them it seems out

of context, but connected.

But what it does is it breaks
the linear, repetitive cycle.

Because if kids only learn in linear,
repetitive cycles, if kids only

learn in linear, repetitive cycles,
they're falling sh they're falling

short of high math achievement.

“That’s a wrap on today’s look at
nonlinear instruction and why our Type A

math habits sometimes hold students back.

Next week, we dive into the
heart of the Mastery Math Method:

rectangles, interleaving, iteration,
and why kids should be working

with structure—not worksheets.

This is where classrooms get transformed.

And hey—if you’re loving this and
want to get the full workshop where

we go step-by-step into the Mastery
Math Method, you can sign up to

experience one workshop for just $47.

The link is waiting for
you in the show notes.

Leave you comments below.