The Hook

What are you doing this weekend? And what made you want to do whatever it is that you do on your free time?

I mean, what makes you want to watch that movie, go to that event, show up at that party? What makes you pick up that book or call that friend to do dinner.

Someone has to grab your attention and hook you in.

Sometimes it’s a trailer for a movie. Sometimes it’s an advertisement. Sometimes it’s a personal invitation. Sometimes it’s an article you read or a flyer you spotted or a word-of-mouth recommendation or an email from me looking/stalking for NHD judges (please! We still need some for saturday morning!)

But you and I are not immune to getting hooked into things.

So why don’t we plan explicitly to “hook” our kids into our lessons?

We know that some of our students struggle to get “into” school. Some struggle to participate. Some struggle with motivation. Some struggle with relevance.

Sometimes we treat these issues as something we can get to maybe when we have time. Something we would tackle if we didn’t have so gosh darn much content to teach. Something that sounds like a good idea but not our main jobs.Something that’s not our problem; it’s the kids’ problem.

I would argue that motivation and engagement are MORE important than the details of our content. These things are not secondary to the content. Without engaging kids, the kids will never LEARN the content!

Does that make sense? Kids can’t learn content if they don’t have a reason. They can’t learn it if it doesn’t catch them and relate to them.

I sat through a training recently that wasn’t relevant to me. You better believe that I struggled to be engaged and learn the content because I didn’t connect or see a reason for learning it.

Why don’t we use quick hooks to get our kids interested and engaged -- so that we can increase motivation and increase participation and increase student success?

In plain speak, why don’t we do something to get our pique our students’ interest and then see if that makes them more likely to participate and actually learn?[

A hook doesn’t have to take long. It shouldn’t take long! Somewhere between one minute and five minutes. It might be part of you bellwork. It might not.

One of the easiest, quickest hooks I ever saw was an ELA teacher teaching about suspense. He had piled a bunch of books precariously on his desk that were going to fall at any moment. That was a fantastic hook that required less than one minute of class time.

So what can we do to hook our kids? There are a million ideas. Here are just a few

• Relatable Questions: Ask a relatable, discussion-worthy question. Kids can turn and talk or can do one-minute, timed quickwrites and share.
• If an 18 year old decides to run away from his/her family, should the family make that person come back? What about a 17 year old? (to introduce the Civil War)
• Artworks: Art is created to make people think and feel. Period. If you can find art to hook kids, you can engage them in a non-intimidating way.
• Nothing like the “American Progress”  painting to get kids thinking about Westward Expansion. You can do “I See, I Think, I Wonder” pretty quickly and get the kids thinking.
• Surveys/Continuum:  Ask your students what they think about whatever. Or, have them place themselves on a continuum.
• Survey them about whether they would rather stay home on the farm or move to a factory town for work during the Industrial Revolution. Ask them to make a human continuum of whether they think stronger federal government or stronger state governments better protect people’s rights.
• Prior Knowledge: Sometimes, the kids don’t have any prior knowledge. But sometimes they do. Instead of assuming one way or another, find out. If they DO know something, it will make them feel more successful and likely to participate that day.
• Ask them to “braindump” everything they know about World War II (or think they know) or about the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
• Card Sorts: A card sort is a great way to get kids engaged. Give them cards with different terms from the lesson and have them sort them into categories that “make sense”.
• Give the kids cards with amendments and have them sort the amendments into categories.
• A Video: A quick  video -- with a higher-order question that ties to the point of the  lessons is always a good way to catch your students’ attention. But make it a useful video that it quick. And then don’t ask your kids to take notes. Try asking them to link the video to the benchmark or using five words to describe the event in the video or asking them to explain the connection
• Try a video of the Berlin Wall coming down on live TV or a Brain Pop or Flocabulary or any of a million great lesson hooks. Just keep it quick and relate it to the lesson.
• Adolescent Perspective: Get inside the brain of a teen or kid at the time and see if you can get your modern kids to think about being a kid in the past.
• Try a quote from the Tinkers (of Tinker vs. Des Moines), a quick story about the Children’s March in Birmingham, or the perspective of a younger sibling of soldier in war.

How do you purposefully hook your kids in at the beginning of a lesson? How to you intentionally grab their attention? If you think you don’t have time, how can you make time to catch the attention of more students? How do you already do this?

If you don’t regularly use “hooks”, I challenge you to try one on your next lesson and see how it goes. Maybe you can increase your student engagement by 10%? Maybe by 20%?

Let me know how it goes! I love to hear! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy