This chapter is full of hooks that help you incorporate art, music, and drama into your lessons. I love art and this coming up with ideas for how to use art in lessons in something that comes easy to me. I'm the girl who asked for colored pencils and water colors at Christmas! If you're out there saying you can't draw or sing I can tell you that your students don't care! They like seeing our efforts. If you haven't heard of Deep Space Sparkle then you've got to check out her site. This art teacher has lessons separated by grade level with literature connections. She has lessons on famous artists as well. I've used several lessons in my own classroom and my students have loved them.

Chapter 11 is about using student hobbies to hook them in! Remember how important it is to get to know your kids? Use their hobbies in some way in your lesson. I also like Dave Burgess's real-world application hooks. I always wanted to know why I needed to know something. My favorite hook from this chapter gives you a lot to think about, "Can we increase motivation and engagement by offering reasons to learn that go beyond because it's on the test?" The test. {sigh} The test sucks the joy out of learning I think. But if we teach beyond that then the test doesn't matter. Our students will learn more than we hoped to squeeze in!

I'm loving that these past few chapters really give you great questions to guide you as you think about lessons for your classroom.

Faith from 1st Grade Fantabulous is the host of these fantabulous chapters. Check out her post!