Hook Line and Sinker

Every good teacher knows about the ‘hook’. You need to catch their attention, get them thinking about the concept you plan to teach with something . . . interesting. The hook is the appetizer, tantalizing the taste buds. It’s the mood music.

Sometimes I forget about the ‘hook’ and just start plowing, but it’s a mistake to ignore the power of a good hook. A good hook hosts the seeds of the concept you want to teach, and, if carefully chosen, it will be sufficiently memorable as to be forever linked with the concept, thus helping student to learn and remember their learning. The hook is memorable when it presents information in an intriguing, funny, shocking, or just plain entertaining way.

Last week I found the quintessential hook for a lesson I was going to teach about reading dense, nonfiction text. We’re in the midst of a set of lessons on identifying the important ideas in texts for writing a summary: a skill that has extended value. My goals with these lessons are threefold: to improve basic reading comprehension, help students learn how to take good notes, and fend off the misguided temptation to plagiarize.

Reading difficult or complex nonfiction text can be pretty scary business, so I was excited to help my students gain the insight and develop the strategies they will need to read thick stuff with confidence. Here is what I did:

I gave each student a piece of paper and asked them to write their names at the top. Then, I told them that they were going to watch a video and then use our summarizing skills to write a summary of the content of the video. No prob. Then I told them that we’d only watch about two minutes of the video, and that they’d have a chance to retell what they learned to a partner prior to writing the summary. Double no prob.

So? Get your paper and pencil out. For real. Here’s the video.

At 50 seconds, I noticed 36 pairs of eyes widening, and most students were no longer breathing properly.

At 1 minute 30 seconds, I saw at least 30 jaws drop, and several students were mouthing gibberish sounds repeatedly.

By the time I stopped the video at the 2 minute-mark, most students had realized that I could not be serious about this exercise. We all had a good laugh and I posed the question, “What type of person would be able to understand this video without a problem?”

Students suggested physicists, their mechanics maybe, hopefully the guys at Chrysler.

Then I asked students, “What would you do if you absolutely HAD to understand this stuff?”

Barney (not his real name) said, pointing to the screen, “Call that guy.”

“OK. What if you couldn’t call that guy – or any other guy?”

The ideas started pouring in and I recorded them on chart paper:

- watch the video in smaller bits

- use a dictionary to find the meanings of unfamiliar words

- watch the video bits several times using the newly identified word meanings

- use the visual information in the video

- paraphrase the bits of video that we are beginning to understand at this point

- take notes on the bits of video we are beginning to understand

- ask questions to identify gaps in our understanding

- then phone that guy

Yes! All of the strategies that we’d need when reading complex nonfiction just made sense given the context of this video. Great hook, indeed! It was fun. It mirrored the main idea of the lesson. It made us laugh. It will be remembered.

During the next few minutes I read from a fairly complex piece of text explaining the concept of ecology. I used a think aloud to show students how I use the strategies for deciphering complex nonfiction text: slowing my pace, rereading, paraphrasing, using syntax and semantic knowledge to unlock the meaning of unfamiliar words, questioning, notetaking, etc. I jotted down the key words in the piece, and then used these words to write a brief summary. I then asked my students to work with a partner to do as I did with another short bit of text on symbiotic relationships between species.

Ah! It was wonderful. The hook set the stage and made the lesson memorable. The modeling fell perfectly into place after students themselves identified the strategies needed.

Next week, we’ll review this little video when we learn about satire (and checking our sources). I think they will forgive me.