Intention Deficit? Try hooking students with Why?

Lesson Hooks-- Cultivating an intention-rich classroom.

Cognitive scientists point out the massively effective habit of recruiting and maintaining focus in the learning process.  For learners--be they adults, children, or teens in between--the challenges of staying focused in our "intention - deficit" society can create real challenges to meaning making.  In schools, we throw unending stimuli, ideas, facts, and figures at our students and wonder why they have trouble retaining.  The point of starting a lesson in an interesting, purposeful way is to set the course of intention forward.

One potential issue arises from the importance of setting the stage for students to become vested in what they are learning.  Why are they being asked to learn a given topic?  Why is it significant or important? 

Of course, drawing on their prior learning through discussion can create important bridges of learning as students connect old understandings and new content and concepts.  But a critical element to the opening of a unit of study--and every lesson contained in it--is a viable, interesting, and inductive lesson HOOK.  I have noticed 5 key elements:

1. Interest!  We, as teachers, can choose to be enthralled when we share a lesson opener with our students.  Our interest and joy is contagious--particularly when we offer it authentically.  If the topic is truly important for me, then the rationale for WHY is embedded in every gesture and non-verbal cue I choose.

2. Stimuli.  Using an image, story or demonstration carries with it some moving parts and stimulation that our typically lingo - centric  curricula do not.  Even telling a story or using song lyrics can activate a different center in the brain and thus draw students in.  But it's important that the choice is purposeful.  Our students are good detectives, and they do realize when we are simply inserting a clever idea or prompt just to fulfill the needs or exigencies of a teacherly lesson.  When we break the bank to find the truly novel and interesting facts, images, clips, or prompts, they realize that we have committed to something, and they will join in. 

3. Brief.  2 minutes or less for a typical lesson.  For unit hooks, a whole class period might be preferable.  Sometimes, a good opening frame to a lesson can run the risk of taking over the lesson proper.  That said, we need to remember that the hook is really only meant, in most cases, to convey the gist of the lesson and to suggest its importance to our students.  We can tell them or simply imply why they can choose to care. 

4. Genuine and not gimmicky. Again, students are good detectives.

5. Of central import.   Many of us use essential questions that focus students on enduring understandings in their learning.  We hope that they will carry forward, for example, the concept of tragedy--or a hero, or argument, or love--from the lesson at hand.  Thus it's important for us to reflect on the key issue or understanding that the students will experience throughout the whole lesson and then make that the focus of the hook.  

What are some examples?

Storytelling.  Life lesson, BOOM!  A crossroads.  A time of epiphany.  Tell a story, and hook your students. Again, if we ski through the five gates mentioned above, the anecdote can be powerful, not just a filler or moment of sensational interest. 

Image or short video.  I used a quick demo of a body outline as students were walking in with the idea that the lesson would guide students to engage in chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby.   The image of the body outline on the floor made the lesson immediately interesting, and we engaged in some role-playing from there, taking the parts of the characters, questioning them as to what they understood about the scenario, etc.