Even though it’s a necessary part of growing up, being a teenager is hard. You’ve here in the most uncertain time period of your life, just trying to figure out who you want to be and what you want to do, and you’ve got people screaming answers and advice at you from a million different angles. Your peers are telling you what’s cool and not cool, your parents are holding these expectations and goals over your head, and society itself seems to be pushing you in all kinds of different directions. Not to mention, this is all happening while hormones and the psychological factors associated with growing up are tearing your mind to shreds.

So imagine now that you’re in this period of your life, and suddenly  you find yourself in a classroom with this obnoxiously flighty guy whose hair looks like ramen and he’s telling you that you can’t go talk to your friends or look at your phone and that you’ve gotta sit still for 45 minutes because science is cool or something.

Nobody cares! And of course, why would they? A kid’s got so many things to worry about in a day, they’re not going to suddenly become invested in a lecture about photons just because some adult asked them to. This is why the beginning part of a lesson or class session is so important, and this is why it’s referred to in the learning cycle as the ENGAGE. If you want to get your students thinking at the start of a topic, then you’ve got to bring out the big guns and absolutely knock them to the floor. Do something so cool, they have no choice but to concede and become invested in what you’re talking about. Once you get that ball rolling, they’ll have some sort of foundation to stand on: allowing the rest of the lesson to be built on their initial curiosity.

Of course, this is more easily said than done, and in this current age of dwindling attention spans and increased student anxiety, how can we possibly come up with lesson hooks that are not only cool enough to get our students attention, but also that can take their minds off of the pains of being in high school? Furthermore, I don’t know about you, but last I checked, public schoolteachers aren’t exactly making bank every week. The sad truth is that sometimes in life, cool stuff costs money, money that we often don’t have.

Fear not, my dearest of readers, because this week, we’re going to be talking about:

FIVE SUPER AWESOMELY COOL TOOLS OF ENGAGING SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE!!!

(that won’t make you poor)

1. DEMOS:

   Imagine this, the bell has just rang, you’re sitting in your seat waiting for class to start, and all of a sudden your teacher walks into the classroom holding two beakers full of God-knows-what and nonchalantly says “Yo, you guys want to see me drink some acid?” It would be hard to not think “What? What’s she mean by that? Is she seriously going to drink pure acid right now?”. The thing about science is that it’s full of over-the-top reactions, interactions, and phenomena that students can see with their own eyes and say “Holy crap, that was cool.”. From lighting matches with lasers to crumpling containers with air pressure to melting action figures with H2SO4, there are all kinds of crazy things you can lead a lesson with to get students invested in the topic at hand. This website here has a bunch of great examples, such as the reaction of elemental sodium with water and the supercooling of nitrogen vapor.

   https://www.thoughtco.com/high-school-chemistry-demonstrations-604263

2. CLASS CHALLENGES:This one is a personal favorite of mine. What better way to kick off a lesson than to come into class holding a box full of garbage and saying “We’re going to be building something awesome today. Get into groups and get ready to be creative!”. The best science and engineering classes I’ve ever been in have used this sort of divergent thinking activity to give students a chance to get their hands dirty and kick their brains into overdrive with some real-world experience.

   Not only do these assignments let your students move around and make something to complete a goal (like a car, a scale, a marble maze, or a wind turbine), but also it can serve as a great “before” piece of a lesson. Let’s say I had my students make race cars during a unit about frictional forces, with the goal being to make the fastest car that reaches the bottom of a ramp in the shortest possible amount of time. At the end of the unit, once all of the students understand friction better, it could be a really useful part of the lesson to go back and have them redesign their cars after learning more about the way friction works, writing about the changes they made and why.

   The materials needed for a divergent thinking activity don’t have to break the bank, either. In fact, sometimes the lack of resources makes the assignment more fun since it forces students to be more creative with their use of materials. Paper, dowel rods, Popsicle sticks, pens, markers, crayons, and regular everyday objects like this can all be useful tools in the hands of a clever 12 year old. Just clean out your junk drawer and get ready to see some crazy machines!

   Just in! Sign up for my book updates mailing list and get a FREE Hierarchy of Needs for #Innovation & #DivergentThinking Reflection Book with reflective questions and activities geared for making you think about change! Sign up here: https://t.co/lsDa7ibAml #hierarchyseries pic.twitter.com/rKxY0HANCi

   — Mandy Froehlich (@froehlichm) March 31, 2018

3.  SIMULATIONS:
    Simulations are a lot like demos in some ways. They do a great job of showing off phenomena and how they react in response to different things, and they can also be really over-the-top and cool. That said, one thing a simulation can do that a demo can’t is allow each student to play with the different variables and learn about relationships. How does my box’s travel change when I increase friction? How fast does this planet spin when I move it closer to the sun? Kid’s just can’t resist that “turn every slider up to the maximum to see what happens” itch when they use simulations, and this does a great job of showcasing the relationships between variables in equations as well as other relationships in a hands-on way.
   Plus, simulations don’t have to be expensive. Although some might require licenses or subcriptions, websites like PhET.com have awesome simulations that are easy to use and understand, and that cost a grand total of zero dollars. Just look around on the internet for a while, and I’m sure you’ll find some free simulations that are relevant to your topic at hand.

   https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/new
   

4. ROLE-PLAYING ACTIVITIES:As an avid player of D&D (the best game in the world), it’s safe to say that I’m a pretty big fan of role-playing. In fact, the very first lesson plan that I ever wrote and performed all on my own was a role-playing activity about the formation of stars, and it was so much fun to come up with and perform. I had the students pretend to be different elements forming the core of a planet, and their job was to bump around into each other and slosh around, sinking to different levels based on their densities. The students loved a chance to get out of their seats and move around, and for kinesthetic learners, activities like this are a great way to remember the relationships between an objects properties and its actions (like how more dense things move towards the center of a planet’s gravity).

   Activities like this also give students a great chance to personify aspects of science topics. Oh, because I have lots of energy, I have to do this. That means that things with lots of energy want to do this. While not entirely accurate, this sort of mindset can work wonders in terms of getting students to understand why things do what they do.

5. RIDDLES AND PUZZLES:
    

   Nothing gets your brain juices flowing like a good tantalizing riddle. Leading off with a “brain buster” or something of this nature is an awesome way to get the energy levels up in your classroom before you begin the lesson, especially if you bring your own enthusiasm and passion to the situation as well. What’s even better is when you can connect the puzzle to the topic at hand. For instance, in a lesson about density, you could show your students something like this:

   “How the heck is that guy sitting on a liquid?” one kid might ask, thus throwing your classroom into a storm of students asking questions and coming up with insane answers and creative ideas. Does he have water-repelling shoes? Did he put gelatin in the water first? Once you get your students asking these questions, it’s going to be pretty hard to get them to stop wondering about the lesson. You can find all kinds of puzzles like this on the internet, and none of them will cost you a dime.