 At any one moment, very different levels of motivation and attention are evident within a classroom. Teachers know all too well that there is a strong link between motivation and attention, and that learning is based on a foundation of attention regulation. If this foundation is compromised, learning becomes unstable at best. While if we are truly motivated to engage in a learning activity, the greater attention we give this task. Knowing what to do, how to get started, what to focus on, what to filter out, and having the ability to sustain alertness and mental effort can be challenging for some students. It comes as no surprise then that problems in attention regulation negatively affect classroom functioning and optimal outcomes for deep learning. Whether in an early years, high school or adult learning setting, this provides unique contextual challenges for educators. A comprehensive psychological and neurological understanding of the executive function of attention is critical for teachers to move students from a surface learning stage to deeper engagement. Attentional functions are thought to represent relatively independent aspects of attention that are linked to separable brain regions and distinct neural networks. Within the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, research by Posner and colleagues has provided critical contributions to understanding attention. Their neural network model is of key importance to attention research and holds particular relevance to understanding the behaviors of classroom learning, the importance of regulating attention for learning, and the difficulties faced by some students. According to the neural network model, the brain's attentional system is made up of three distinct neural networks. The first network is called the alerting network. It functions to achieve and maintain an alert state for sustained attention. This is the ability to sustain attention over a period of time to a given task. Alerting, notes Greer, is the state of readiness to some form of sensory input. Teachers instinctively know they need to prepare students to receive input and use a range of strategies such as hand clapping or gestures to gain their attention. But there are many other sources of input that may divert students' attention once it has been gained, such as an unexpected thunderclap, a funny joke told by a classmate, or something else that is deemed as more interesting than the task at hand. Within the alerting network, a major control function that helps to sustain our attention during learning is called behavioral activation, the ability to stay alert and motivated to get the job done, even if the work is hard, boring, or uninteresting. Students with attention control weakness who experience this difficulty have a problem with their alerting network. It can be easily misunderstood as laziness, when in fact the alerting network simply doesn't activate appropriately to maintain motivation for difficult work. What makes it even more puzzling for parents and teachers is the fact that mental alertness isn't a problem when these students are doing activities that are intrinsically motivating, for example if they're engaged in computer games or aspects of schoolwork that they really love. This apparent contradiction is in fact the way that the alerting network actually works. Arousal or alertness is automatically activated for personally meaningful and motivating activities, but arousal or alertness requires activation for effortful learning to enable students and adults to follow through and persist with arduous, boring, or uninteresting work. The second network of the neural network model is the alerting network. The alerting network directs or orients our attention and it functions to select information for attentional focus while blocking out or ignoring irrelevant information. This is our ability to selectively focus on and attend to the relevant information while filtering out distractions to complete tasks. In classrooms where there are so many competing distractions, students need to learn to selectively focus their attention for most parts of the day. Students arriving late to class, others talking, bells and phones ringing, missing pencils or books, interruptions by announcements, smells of food wafting in from the canteen and outside sport activities are all competing for students' attention. When the orienting network is in operation mode, the attention filters are switched on. Students who experience impulse and attention control weakness typically are easily distracted, have difficulty following multi-step instructions and appear not to listen. They may daydream and mind wander because of distractions from internal events and they are off-task because they are tuning into the distractions. The third network is the executive control network. This network supports higher level control processes as it directs and controls both our thinking and our social behaviour. The executive control network helps us to plan and organise our work, work out what to do, where to start and how to start. Sequence the steps of a task, manage our time well so that we don't leave assignments to the last minute, start work without procrastinating, check for mistakes, keep a check on our social behaviour to make sure they are appropriate to the situation and problem solve efficiently when we strike a difficulty rather than get stuck in that difficulty. This executive control network is like the brain's project manager. In a classroom, students are constantly called upon to project manage their learning activities. Students can have the best cognitive and language abilities in the world, but unless they can plan and organise, start the task and maintain attention, sequence and time manage, using their working memories to hold information in mind while they work with that information and keep check of their progress, then they will not perform at their optimal best and deep learning will be compromised. Although each of the three networks is defined by some independence, a well functioning attentional system sees the networks working cooperatively together to produce effective and adaptive behaviours. It's all very well-noting the cognitive theories behind attention regulation, but what are some of the practical strategies teachers can use to develop attention leading to motivation for deep learning in the classroom? For example, how can teachers assist students with their alerting network when they display low motivation for effortful work? These students require considerable scaffolding of the use of helpful thinking by raising awareness of their own thoughts and helping them to understand that their thoughts have a critical impact on their performance, feelings, learning and social behaviours. The next step is to reframe these unhelpful motivational states by helping students to develop productive ways of thinking through positive self-beliefs and looking for the importance, value and possible interest in the learning task. Set children up for success by providing tasks of medium effort. Big-effort tasks are overwhelming and invite unhelpful thinking of task behaviour or work avoidance. It is more helpful to provide two tasks of medium effort than to give one big-effort task in supporting best efforts, persistence and helpful thinking. What about the orienting network? Here teachers can prompt for attention and focus listening prior to giving an instruction and be aware of background noise and distractions. A set line of physical activity is considered a defining feature of attention and reflective learning. Prompting children to check their physical activity and brain energy prepares them for listening. Consider providing information or instructions in both verbal and visual formats where possible to help children retain key details. Images, graphs and charts, mind maps, visual schedules, step planners, infographics and visual reference keys are all excellent models. And the central executive network? How do we help support the brain's project manager? The cooperative liaison between home and school is particularly important to children's learning of organisational skills and strategies. Daily organisational systems can be shared with parents. These might include organising school bags with specific pockets for lunch, permission slips and library book, organising schoolwork with colour-coded books or organising desk and work area. The use of step planners helps children develop a metacognitive perspective. Step planners outline all the steps involved in a task, reinforce verbal instructions and reduce working memory demands. Step planners could be completed on the classroom whiteboard or a small whiteboard on a child's desk with an arrow or a number to indicate each step. In today's world, the ability to focus is quite a challenge with so many competing distractions that are vying for our attention. Some say that we are living in a state of continuous partial attention and that our attention is in radar mode divided by multi-tasking and distractions. This brief sketch of the neural networks of attention serves as a baseline for understanding the critical importance of regulating student's attention for classroom learning. With these important skills, students are attentionally focused and ready for deep learning.