Hi Vickie! I like the "ride in on the elephant" approach. Grabbing student attention at the beginning of a lesson is crucial for interest and buy-in. As a young instructor, I always listed the learning objectives from the lesson on the board and often asked students what their expectations of outcomes were as well. It always amazed me how close their perceptions of learning objectives were to the actual instruction at hand. Your elephant approach reminds me of the widely-used, effective teaching model: Grab attention Develop comprehension Maximize the diversity of learning styles Relate content to former and later concepts Engage participation through an active learning environment Balance hands-on skills and applications with higher order thinking Summarize and reinforce