3 Steps to Grabbing Attention
Using “Mental Movies” to Engage!
What grabs a cat’s attention?
A String?
With that simple question, your Mind's-Eye was triggered, and you “saw” a tiny mental movie of a cat playing with a string.
And in that moment, you just experienced our content for this lesson.
In a matter of seconds, you felt and understood the invisible engagement technique we are talking about. Engaging our students by triggering the Mental Movies in their minds.
Here are the 3 steps:
Use fewer, stronger words. Choose carefully.
(Teachers overthink and over-explain way too much.)
Don’t dictate the details.
Allow the freedom and space for each mind to create its own movie. That’s what makes it grab.
Leave gaps (intentionally) that are irresistible to fill. Like “cat” + “string” = your Mental Movie.
2. Use intriguing questions.
Unique. Strange. Curious.
Seemingly unrelated to the “topic at hand”.
Then close the trick with a flourish by connecting the dots. Show how it connects to, and explains the content. (Like we are doing right now.) ;)
3. Be relevant. All of this MUST tap into their past experiences.
If they can’t relate to it immediately - It will fail.
We can’t connect information without a history.
Make it relevant / important to their brain. How?
Make it weird.
Or funny.
Or intriguing.
I wish you well, my friend!
Steven
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