If your students are looking tired in the afternoon or haven’t quite woken up yet in the morning there are a handful of ways to grab their attention. When you are looking to hook students at the beginning of a lesson, try incorporating videos into your instruction.
There are tons of fantastic resources for high quality content that can be used throughout the school day in a variety of subject areas. These sites offer a wide range of resources that teachers can share with students. It’s so important that students are paying attention and feel like what they’re learning is connected to the real world. You can help them make these connections by placing the content you are teaching in the context of real life events and everyday situations.
One online resource that is perfect for accessing content to engage your students is the Discovery Channel. They have a terrific website that lets visitors pick and choose which clips they want to watch. There is also a YouTube channel full of their content which makes it easy to add links to student assignments or even embed a video in a class website or presentation. If you are sharing videos straight from your tablet, or want students to open a particular clip, you may want to check out their mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.
Whether you access these clips on their website or mobile apps, you’ll have plenty to choose from. Help students get excited about using context clues by introducing them to ocean vocabulary during a Shark Week quote. Ask students to summarize the conclusions drawn from a MythBusters experiment. And don’t forget to keep track of which students are “on task” and demonstrating the traits you reward in your classroom!