Hook a student before the lesson? Keep reading, it gets interesting!

 

 As week 5 is coming to an end, it is crazy to reflect back on all that I have learned and grown from so far in the semester. This week in lab we had to present our lesson focusing on our interest approach. Sometimes it is hard to know how to appeal to your audience, so developing an interest approach that would hook all of my students was challenging. I decided to develop a lesson plan in my animal science unit and develop a strong interest approach for my livestock breed unit. 

During my interest approach, I had students pair up and then compete against the other teams. One partner was blindfolded in the hot seat while the other person was describing an animal so their partner could correctly identify it without ever seeing the animal. I tried to incorporate a few of Lancelot's principles of approach into my activity. I primarily relied on competition to motivate my students and to hook them into our topic. 

This week in class, we focused on the different ways to incorporate interest approaches and design objectives that would be engaging for our students. Practicing my ideas on paper was a great way to see if my students were engaged and I am excited to try it in a few months for the "real deal." I know from peer feedback that there are a few modifications that I can make to better my lesson to be the most beneficial for my students.

 
There were many lessons learned from this interest approach lesson! I first learned the variety of techniques to engage my students. Out of everyone in my lab, we all had a unique but effective way of engaging each other, so I am excited to utilize all of the different strategies that I saw. I also learned the importance of bridging the gap of why we did this activity and how it relates to what we will be learning about in the lesson. Just a simple question or statement about how it relates can help the students be more engaged and want to learn about what you have planned to teach! All in all, this was a great lab teaching experience and I am excited to see how my future students like this activity! 

Students if you don't have a good interest approach!