It's time again for our weekly dose of Teach Like Champion by Doug Lemov. This week's technique continues on structuring and delivering your material.
Technique 12 -- Hook it.
The "hook" Doug speaks of is called the "anticipatory set" in educational circles, but "hook" is a good vernacular way of expressing "anticipatory set." It's the thing that grabs, or "hooks" your attention and helps to focus you on the topic at hand. It could be a story, a puzzle, a picture, or a riddle that grabs your student's attention and then leads them into the topic at hand. Doug suggests the following:
- A Story: Tell a quick and engaging story. If you're teaching the bill of rights, you might want to tell a story about a child who got sent to the office because of a shirt he was wearing. If you're introducing multiplication, you might tell about a caterer deciding how many chicken fingers he needs to buy for a banquet to serve all the children in your class.
- Analogy: Find something in your students' lives that connects with the concept you are teaching. Maybe you're going to teach about the circulatory system and you brainstorm with your students how they might get a crate of oranges to all the people on a city block by carrying 3 oranges in each backpack of the 25 children in your class.
- Prop: A good prop can quickly engage your students. Want to talk about spores? Nothing like a really green moldy piece of bread to get your student's interest. Talking about the 2nd world war? I still have my father's Army Air Force uniform, which would certainly give kids a hands on experience of what people felt and experienced as the United States joined with the allies to battle facism.
- Media: A popular song or a brief piece of video might introduce your lesson. For some great little teaching videos, you might check Teacher Tube. This week they're featuring an actor doing a dramatic presentation of the Gettysburg Address. While I was a Lutheran Pastor I lead a workshop for young church leaders (teens) on worship and used a scene from Mad Max: Beyond the Thunder Dome. It was a real hit, and quickly got across the elements of worship.
- Status: With the furious energy that is focused on celebrities, status and fame capture the attention of many students. You might want to ask your students if they heard about Lindsey Lohan going to jail--and you might connect her to someone like Nelson Mandela (if your are talking about apartheid or slavery or some other injustice.) When introducing a topic, talk about how it is "great." "The book we are reading was on the best seller list for 36 months." Or, "This author is considered the greatest of the beat generation."
- Challenge: Give the students a task, individually or in small groups. Back to introducing multiplication: "There are 24 children in our class. If I buy jelly beans for the whole class, and everyone will get 8 jelly beans, how many jelly beans must I buy? The three people in your group see if you can figure it out, and be prepared to report out how you got your result." If you're teaching Shakespeare, you might challenge the class to translate a speech from your reading for the day into modern English (You might show a clip of Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet to talk about updating Shakespeare's dialog.)
For a hook to be truly successful it needs to live up to three criteria:
- It's short. It's the introduction, not the lesson.
- It yields. It will quickly get you to instruction, not down a side alley. Something that is clever but doesn't actually serve the lesson will only waste your time.
- It's energetic and optimistic. You dwell on what is great about Shakespeare, or multiplication or the bill of rights, not what is hard, or confusing or difficult, unless that is what makes it great.
A final note: You don't need a hook for every lesson. Some teachers use hooks only to introduce new material.
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