An easy way to motivate students and encourage engagement is to capture their attention by posting a HOT (High Order Thinking) Question for the class to discuss. HOT questions require students to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information instead of simply recalling facts. Teachers can use a HOT question as a focus for the unit and engage students in multiple activities that will help them answer effectively. One question can be the driving force of multiple activities throughout the course of many days or weeks.

• Create a question that will get students engaged with the lesson after the main objective has been selected.  
  
  • Focus on important content
  • Promote one or more carefully defined instructional purposes
  • Facilitate thinking at a stipulated cognitive level
  • Communicate clearly what is being asked
• Post the question at the beginning of your lesson/unit, and let students know they will need an answer to it by the end of the lesson/unit. This HOT question will be the focus of the lesson/unit.
• Require students to complete a performance task that demonstrates their understanding of the lesson content and that answers the HOT question. Examples of performance tasks include (but are not limited to):
  • Writing an essay in response to the question
  • Designing a project that highlights the key goals of the lesson
  • Developing a model that represents the solution
  • Designing an experiment to test a hypothesis
  • Creating an advance organizer