Looking to boost student engagement without scrapping your lesson plan? Cross Country Education has 5 free and easy hooks to grab your students’ attention—without veering off standards. Check them out! 

<ul><li>“<em>It was a dark and stormy night…</em>”</li><li>“<em>All this happened, more or less.</em>”</li><li>“<em>It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…</em>”</li><li>“<em>A long time ago…but only if you measure things in years’</em>”</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Not only do the above make for great campfire story starters, but they’re all opening first lines of books that hook the reader and propel them into their respective stories. Lesson plan hooks do precisely the same thing for students regarding instruction. As attention span decreases in K-12 students (“Twenty-six percent of public-school leaders reported that a lack of focus or inattention from students had a 'severe negative impact' on learning ¹), the importance of hooking your students early to reel them into a lesson inversely skyrockets. Because of this, Cross Country Education wanted to provide a list of 5 different ways to hook your students without completely uprooting the standards-based lesson you have planned. The best part about the below hooks is that they’re all free.&nbsp;</p><h3>Start &amp; Stop</h3><p>Imagine you’re streaming a movie on a weekend, and suddenly, the screen locks on a freeze frame of the main character speaking, and the loading symbol circles in the middle of the screen. Your attention becomes fixated on getting the movie to continue to play. You’ll press play multiple times on your remote, you’ll exit the app, you’ll do a hard restart of the TV, and you’ll even consider the herculean task of getting up from your comfortable couch to reset the Wi-Fi router. The movie has your undivided attention, and when you begin an educational video, only purposefully stop it at a cliff hanger, you’ll have your students’ attention just as well. Use this moment to have your class get into groups and work together to make inferences as to what might happen next. You can even have them use graphic organizers to outline context clues and their predictions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><h3>Musical Chairs</h3><p>Walking into a classroom with rows of chairs and desks that haven’t changed position since the start of the school year can provide comfort to some students; on the other hand, it can bore others. Nothing got my students’ immediate attention quicker than when I swapped their assigned seats around. If your class has open seating, you can instead change the arrangement of the seats or where your desk sits. This can even coincide with the physical movements of a lesson (ex.: Gallery Walk, presentation, or Socratic seminar).&nbsp;</p><h3>Silence Speaks Volumes</h3><p>Having done this personally, I can say with certainty that my students were locked in from the start of the lesson when I used this strategy. Not all standards are the most thrilling for students to learn, or for teachers to teach, but attempting to start a lesson without using any words captures students' interest from the get-go. In this charade-like game, your class will do their best to comprehend your non-verbal messaging. If your students are struggling, using images and or text can help point them in the right direction.</p><h3>Listen to the Music</h3><p>If you think about the order of the letters in the alphabet and your brain automatically begins to internally sing, you know first-hand just how effective music can be on learning (See our blog post on this very same subject - <a href="https://www.crosscountry.com/blog/teaching-in-tune-using-music-in-the-classroom" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Teaching in Tune: Using Music in the Classroom</a>). Regardless of your subject area or grade level, music engages everyone and can help learners develop strong memories. Beginning a class by using music, lyrics, or even just a rhythm meets every teacher’s lesson plan goal by engaging all learners simultaneously.</p><h3>Back in Their Day</h3><p>For this technique, you could say: “Close your eyes and imagine you’ve just stepped into a significant moment in history. What do you see around you? What do you hear? What are you wearing? Who else is there with you?” This approach requires a bit of prior knowledge but can be a powerful way to mentally transport students and set the tone for a new topic. If your students need support, consider showing an image or visual prompt to help them picture the setting more clearly.</p><p>While a hook won’t guarantee 100% participation or laser-like focus for a three-hour college-style lecture, it will, however, like the initial jolt of a rollercoaster, get everyone moving in the planned direction. This intellectual inertia is exactly what educators need to think about in a world whose new currency is attention.&nbsp;</p><h3>Looking to spark more than just student engagement?</h3><p> If you’re ready to bring your passion for education to a new role where creativity and impact go hand in hand, <a href="https://www.crosscountry.com/education/talent-professions?utm_source=Website&amp;utm_campaign=Blog" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">explore the open positions available</a> with Cross Country Education.</p><p><br></p><h4>References:</h4><ol><li>About one-quarter of public schools reported that lack of focus or inattention from students had a severe negative impact on learning in 2023-24. Press Release - About One-Quarter of Public Schools Reported That Lack of Focus or Inattention From Students Had a Severe Negative Impact on Learning in 2023-24 - July 18, 2024. (n.d.). <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/7_18_2024.asp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/7_18_2024.asp</a>&nbsp;</li></ol>

Get Their Attention Quickly - 5 Lesson Hooks

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