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"Set up a surprise, such that resolution of that becomes the lesson that you intended. Anything that makes students ask the question that you plan to answer in the lesson is good, because answering questions that haven't been asked is inherently uninteresting." This article discusses how to create lessons that provoke student interest and prime them for your lesson. We all know that it is important to have a good introduction or a "hook" for a lesson, but this concept goes one step further. A hook that provides too much information leads to waning engagement. The goal is not just to get the student interested, but to make them curious and ask questions that we plan to answer on that day. Although this particular blog post and the examples within are math related, this technique can be implented in any content area.

There are a lot of great problems here that could be used in math class. Starting class with one of these problems could be a great way to hook students into the lesson and have the students start generating their own questions and problem solving methods. Then, the math can be brought in appropriately. A lot of these problems seem to lend themselves to the "3 Act Task" model. A video/image representing the problem could go a long way in getting kids hooked.

"Just a quick post- we started a unit on percents today.  Found this activity from Illuminations, but I needed it to be a little bit more.  The activity takes the BMIs and weights of season 14′s contestants and students need to find the percent lost for each in order to find out who won the game.  We then had a discussion on why the show does not award the prize to the person with the most weight lost, but the highest percentage." You could find some good video/media to go along with this to hook students - Maybe a before/after picture video which I'm sure you could find online. Have the students use the video to predict the winner then get into the worksheet. There are some pretty good extension activities embedded here as well: Research how BMI is calculated, Determine whether percentage of weight lost is the best method to determine the winner, etc.