What is your hook? Not just for Writing Anymore….
From the desk of Melissa…
I am a mystery girl—the more convoluted the plot while still being in the realm of reality, the better! I love to evaluate each new twist and turn as characters evolve and the plot thickens. My favorite authors almost always surprise me, but their story holds together as I follow it back through the book. A puzzling situation is always a hook for me!
When narrative writing and THE TEST were a guiding influence of fourth grade instruction, we (teachers) spent a lot of time reading books with great hooks, designing great hooks with our students, and trying them out on each other. We shared over and over that to motivate your readers you needed to HOOK them!
Now the big question… why didn’t we apply this to our teaching?
In science….
In social studies…
In math…
HOOKing our students and truly engaging them is such an important part of our instructional framework!
As we move forward in common core mathematics, you will be hearing about “great tasks.” You may ask yourself: What are they? Why should I use them? Research has shown us that an important aspect of motivating students is giving them control of their learning: what they do, how they do it, who they work with. A great task takes what we know about motivation and puts it into practice.
A great task is a real world scenario that relates to students’ lives…
A great task allows students to apply mathematics to that real world scenario…
A great task helps students gain a deeper understanding…
A great task motivates students to become mathematicians…
These tasks can take days or weeks to complete, allowing students to discover mathematic principles, learn and master vocabulary in context, and make sense of mathematics in their own lives. A pretty tall order, but what a HOOK for our instruction!
Take this task from Shell Education’s MAP Classroom Challenges beta projects for middle school. Seventh graders are working on applications for two- and three-dimensional objects, as well as the formula for finding the circumference of a circle. The task they are presented with to explore these concepts is this:
You have been asked to design a sports bag!
So where does the mathematics come in? Students are given the dimensions of the finished bag and directions on how many pieces of fabric they may use to create the bag. The task increases in complexity as students have to accommodate their measurements to allow for sewing the bag together, the dimensions of a bolt of fabric, etc.
As students begin to engage in this task, they quickly are in search of some formulas and using what they already know about mathematics to help them adjust their measurements. Needing the formula to help them solve their task makes this knowledge relevant and necessary. They are HOOKed!
As you jump into the common core here are some resources from NCTM to get you started: