Student Buy-In

When getting students to "buy in" to a lesson, it helps to involve them and their interests as much as possible.  To do this, I try to encourage students to bring in their own ideas and passions to the work we are doing.  For example, when working to discover how authors establish mood, I invite students to bring in their own books.  In this way, they share their own "moody literature" and have sense of what the book is about in the first place.  In addition, they typically choose to share something they like, so then they are more invested. 

In the photos below, you will see students sharing their "moody literature" with classmates and working to 1) identify the mood present and 2) discuss how the author establishes that mood.  This is also a good way to expose them to literature recommended by their classmates, and thus, they are more likely to be interested in reading it.