Student interest and engagement must be created!

As a future agriculture teacher, I really want my students to learn, but in order for them to learn most effectively, I must spark their interest in the content and get them actively engaged throughout the lesson.

Those classes that I have learned the most in are those classes in which the teachers helped me see the importance of the material, and how it could affect or help me personally. Once those connections were made in my mind, I looked forward to the next class, learning more, and even researching more outside of class if it really sparked my interest. I want to be like those teachers because I know the impact it had on me as a learner.

First, I must establish my objectives for the course and class (what do I really want my students to get out of the content and how will it benefit them?). I like to add variety to my writing, sentence structure, verb usage, etc.; however, sometimes the mind has its limitations, so I often look up synonyms and definitions. I want this variety to apply to my learning objectives as well. In Methods of Teaching Agriculture, the authors state the importance of using action words as objectives. When I read lists of action words for objectives, it helps me to start thinking outside of the box, and gets me thinking of "hooks"/ interest approaches, and activities I could use to gain and maintain student interest. Another important component of capturing students interest is to show enthusiasm about what you are teaching!

Here is a link to a pdf. of action words for lesson objectives!
 agsci.psu.edu/elearning/pdf/objective-verbs.pdf 

Some of my favorite hooks that I could see myself incorporating into my lessons from Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess are; The Kinesthetic Hook, the Picasso Hook, The Mozart Hook, The Real-world Application Hook, and The Props Hook.