Lessons · Teaching · new learning sticks to what is already known
New learning has to stick to something
Nothing is learned in a vacuum. New material is understood by attaching it to something a learner already has, so the first job of a lesson is to find that hook and put it where they can reach it.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
You taught equivalent fractions twice, carefully, and it did not take. Then somebody asked the room about sharing one pizza between four people and between eight, and it took in nine minutes. The second lesson was not better. It started somewhere they had already been.
How to think about it
Before you plan, write one sentence: what can they already do that this is like? If you cannot answer it, the lesson has no hook and you will spend the lesson building one, which is fine as long as you know that is what you are doing.
Worked example
Hook: sharing 1 pizza between 4, then between 8Something every child in the room has done. The hook is not a gimmick; it is the thing the new idea attaches to.
Bridge: one quarter and two eighths are the same amount of pizzaThe known thing, said in the new notation. This sentence does most of the work in the lesson.
New: multiply the top and the bottom by the same numberOnly now, and only because there is something for it to attach to.
Check the hook first: 'show me a half', 30 sThirty seconds. If the hook is not there, today's lesson is about the hook.
Your turn
A lesson on decimals follows a unit on money. Write the hook line for the plan.
Hook: 100 cents make one
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Assuming the hook is there because it was taught last year. Taught is not the same as available. Check it out loud, in thirty seconds, before you build anything on top of it.