Five keys to learning: Grabbing students’ attention

This is the fourth of five articles in which I am exploring five principles of well-planned lessons. In part one, I outlined the five principles (A design for learning: The five lesson keys, SecEd, January 28, 2016: http://bit.ly/1SgRKHt). In short, these are:

In this article, we will consider the third principle: how to “grab students’ attention”...

Students need self-discipline, self-direction, and the ability to delay their gratification in order to be successful in school and yet many students are unwilling to work hard. Students typically misunderstand that their role is to develop their understanding, not merely acquire (and then regurgitate) the information that teachers provide them with. Often, teachers try to overcome this by issuing extrinsic rewards such as praise, prizes, and privileges, or indeed extrinsic sanctions such as low grades and punishments.